InsaneJournal

Bad Habit
Normally, Jill didn't like meeting potential informants after dark in the back of some dim, noisy establishment. Sure, the presence of alcohol was nice -- the agent couldn't remember the last time she'd had a beer -- but the idea of interviewing someone for a case with a backdrop of deafening techno left much to be desired.

Thankfully, top-of-the-line, government-issue voice recorders drowned some of that noise. Still, the whole thing seemed seedy and, to be perfectly honest, a bit cliche. Jill felt like she was on an episode of Alias or The X-Files or even The Sopranos.

She just hoped this informant didn't wind up dead after talking to her.

The agent scanned the crowd, surprisingly dense for a Wednesday night. Several co-eds were drunkenly dancing all over each other. They must've thought it sensuous, but Jill found it to be incredibly clumsy. Not to mention, girls like that were often vampire bait. Who better to pick off for a meal than an intoxicated, possibly horny co-ed?

The only reason Grace had chosen the bar near the Loop was because the management was Mafia. She trusted the feds about as much as she trusted the Council, and she wanted to make sure the agent she'd spoken to didn't decide to get all brave and turn this into a sting operation. Do-gooders were all alike, no matter who they worked for, and she wasn't letting herself get caught in a crossfire.

"Agent Andersen?" The vampire had to raise her voice to be heard over the music, dropped her weight in the chair across the table from the other woman. Wondered if the broad was armed. There was an office in the back they could use if a quieter place became necessary. The bartender had a shotgun within easy reach, and the meatheads working security were bound to have at least a handgun each. "Hope you found the place without trouble. I hate the Loop, but this is close enough to home."

"No problem at all," Jill called out above the thump of what passed for music in the place. She gave the other woman a once-over with a curious brow, and a number of questions swirled through the agent's mind. Was this woman involved with the mafia? If so, was she looking to get out and start over? Was she just a witness, someone who saw or heard something and had to unload it from her conscience? The dim lighting of the bar, along with the sounds and sights assaulting the senses, made sure Jill couldn't get too much of a read on the woman sitting across from her.

Which would probably make this a little harder than she would've liked.

"I came alone, so no need to worry about that," she added, flashing her badge momentarily and leaning forward so it would be easier to hear the other woman without full-on yelling. Fortunately, the weather outside was still a little chilly, which meant Jill could get by with her bulky black coat. It also meant she could hide her agent-issued handgun from the woman or anyone else's sight. Nothing got potential mob types, or even regular people, all uptight like seeing someone packing heat.

"You said you had information for me?"

"Yeahhh." Grace let the word drag out a little, hunching forward in the chair to pull her jacket tighter around herself. "I had been tryin' to reach a colleague of yours, but he never called me back. I finally got transferred to another branch, to your desk phone. Jason Dimes, you might have worked with him before? He's DEA, not with the Feebs, but it's kinda all one and the same, you law enforcement types, right?"

It was partially true; she had tried to raise Dimes on the phone, but after having no luck at setting up a meet she'd decided to make an end-run towards the FBI. This was just a fact-finding mission, anyway. She needed to find out what the fucker had been up to, if he'd gotten the rest of the narc squad in on it yet. If he'd been sharing water-cooler talk with anyone about a big bust he was working on, an advance warning would work wonders.

The kill order would come later, when enough information had been gleaned.

"I'd spoken with Mister ... Agent Dimes before, about possibly gettin' out. I'm in deep debt to some folks, owe some very bad people a lot of money." The vampire summoned up a rueful, slightly nervous expression, casting a look back over her shoulder before facing the brunette again. "Football, y'know? My old man was semi-pro before we split up, he liked to bet on the games. I picked up his bad habit, couldn't lose it after the divorce."

Mulling the name over in her head for a moment, Jill frowned when she realized she didn't know a Jason Dimes. she jotted the name down on the pad of paper, made a note to ask Maureen about him at a later date. Though the number of agents stationed in Chicago was probably smaller than necessary, Jill still didn't know all of them. Chances were, he did work in that office and she just hadn't run into him yet.

Still, it never hurt to check things out anyway.

Regarding the woman once more, and still confident she didn't need to know her informant's name, Jill glanced over her shoulder. In spite of the noise and myriad of other distractions in the bar, there was really no such thing as being too careful; someone could've easily been snooping in on their conversation.

Confident any surveillance attempts weren't horribly overt, the agent tapped the end of her pen against her thumb. She paid the line about football little mind; it really wasn't terribly pertinent to the conversation, she didn't think, and it wasn't that rare to hear of someone affiliated, however loosely, with the mob wanting out. Daniel had approached her with something similar, after all.

"I'm looking into a man named Wil Rowley," she said, cocking her head to the side. "Do you know Mr. Rowley?"

"Rowley ... Rowley." After a second, Grace shook her head, sitting even more forward in the chair to rest her forearms on the table. "I don't know that many names, not first-hand," she said with false regret. "I got involved with a bookie named Feore, feeding him inside information so he'd know how to work the odds when it came time to lay down bets. Who was starting, who was playing hurt, stuff like that. I work for a sports agent, in his office."

She was trying to remember how this went, how people acted when they were in trouble, and her hands came together in a good imitation of a prayerful gesture. She even managed to manufacture a decent catch in her voice. "They threatened my kid, man. I been scared to let her out of my sight, even to go to school. Mister Dimes assured me he could help me as long as I cooperated, but I can't get in touch with him. He didn't forget about me, did he?"

Good, this was good, just enough desperation in her voice to make it stick. "I'm sorry, can we go someplace quieter, this noise is driving me crazy." She gestured behind her with a head motion, and her chair scraped a little when she pushed it backwards. "We can sit in the office. I hang around back there sometimes, no one'll think its weird. I've been all nerves since this started."

The kid part gave Jill pause, and she was about to ask about that when the other woman asked to move somewhere else. She didn't mind the request to move to a quieter spot -- it was getting a little too hard to conduct an investigative interview -- but somehow, the suggestion of going into a back room within the dim bar didn't sit well with her. This seemed like something in one of those movies where the mob gets at the feds with some elaborate ruse that ended with the fed tied to a chair missing a few limbs.

Still, the woman seemed sincere, and Jill was armed, so the agent decided to go with it for the time being.

Gathering her notepad and the jacket concealing her weapon, the pocket deep enough to make sure no part of the weapon could be seen by anyone else, Jill let the other woman lead the way. She didn't bother getting her would-be informant's name, because that guaranteed their anonymity. Jill could never tell a would-be torturer the name of an informant if she herself didn't have the person's name. Granted, that was a rather unlikely scenario, but it was part of her FBI training, so the agent decided she would be well-served to take heed of those teachings and take care of her own interests.

"Can you give me a name for the sports agent?" Jill asked once they were in the other room with the door shut.

"Martin. Martin Kostichek." There was a desk and three chairs, and Grace perched herself on the desk with her feet dangling an inch or so above the floor. "Really nice guy, gave me a job after the divorce papers were filed. Just running errands, sometimes deal with some correspondence, stuff like that."

She looked down at her lap, picked a piece of lint off of her pants. "I have a four-year-old," she said in a lower voice, because that was the hook, this imaginary kid of hers. Most breeders couldn't resist a kid if they tried, and a White Hat breeder should be even more susceptible to it. "I got custody after her dad left, and I've been fighting like hell to make ends meet so I can keep her fed and clothed. I don't know how I even got into this other thing. I have to get out before something happens to me. I'm all she's got left."

Jill's frown deepened. She studied the woman for a moment, going through every red flag she could think of in order to spot a lie. Jill had to admit she wasn't the best when it came to that sort of thing, but based on what she knew about facial expressions and body language, the woman sitting before her appeared legitimate.

To have such a young girl and be involved in something like this ... the agent had to admit, her heartstrings were feeling a little tug. Jill didn't have any children, and based on recent events, she wasn't sure she ever would, but the agent felt for the woman just trying to make ends meet for her family. If Jill could get enough information to help this woman get out of this situation, that would almost make her feel as good as solving the case itself.

"What's your daughter's name?" Jill asked, deciding that by trying to reach out and connect, she'd be better equipped to get the information she needed. Wil Rowley was apparently a dead end for the time being, but if the agent could find something else, maybe the night wouldn't be a total loss.

"Ruth." Drawing on a long-dormant memory, looking down at the scuffed linoleum in front of the desk. "Named her for my own momma. They said they were gonna hurt her, hurt my little girl. I've started jumpin' at every little sound at night, y'know?"

Grace knotted her fingers together, tried to decide how much was too much. "Do you know of anything special Mister Dimes was workin' on? I know he's an important man, can't look after everything on his own, but he promised ..."

"I'm sorry," Jill said, taking a seat across from the woman. "I've never actually met Agent Dimes before. Heard one of two other agents mention he was doing something big, but I never heard what.

"We're ... kinda secretive about the cases we're on."

The agent couldn't help but wonder if Agent Dimes was so hard to get a hold of because the mafia had already gotten to him. She figured they would try to silence one of their own first, and maybe they had; if Jill was being completely honest with herself, she'd have to admit the mafia wasn't her area of expertise.

In a way, this mafia case was a little too real for her. At least with her other cases, there was a supernatural element to it. Jill knew just enough about supernatural phenomenon to know there was always a cause -- and almost always a remedy, if not a way to cope in the future. But something as mundane and ordinary as the mafia? That hit a little harder, and the agent found herself nearly at a loss.

"When was the last time you spoke to Agent Dimes?"

"A couple of weeks ago. We had a quick face-to-face at a garage called Dante's, he said he'd get back to me. I figured he had to talk to his bosses. Superiors. Whatever. Red tape's such a pain in the ass no matter where you work, I guess. So much for tax dollars at work."

Something big. Well, that could be anything, really. She was going to have to keep her thumb on this one, make sure nothing else was about to explode. Between this Orpheus guy and at least one snitch (now thoroughly deceased), crime was getting a little more difficult these days.

"Do you have a card?" she asked Agent Andersen. "If I don't hear from him in another few days, I'd like to be able to reach someone else."

"Of course," Jill said, reaching into the breast pocket of her blazer and producing a card with her office and cell phone numbers on it. She handed it to the woman, thinking for a moment to offer a comforting hand to the shoulder. She thought better of it, though, unsure of how such a gesture would be taken. The woman appeared to be going through a rough time, but Jill wasn't sure if her place was to offer comfort so much as to find answers and give her the life she and her daughter wanted.

"I'll look into Dimes," Jill added. "And Kostichek. Go home, okay? Be with your daughter."

"Thanks. I really appreciate this. I hope ... I hope he's all right. He's a nice man." He was also a dead man if this went far enough. The work never ended. "I'll let myself out first. You should wait five minutes, then leave through the front. No one'll bother you, they're drinkin' too hard." Grace tucked the card into her back jeans pocket, managed a humble expression.

"Thanks for your help. Again. It's gonna help a whole bunch."