inquiries & a challenge

[poetontheinside]

Who: Ray Kowalski
Broadcast: Video
Action: Windrose, and space!
When: today and also whenever the races are happening

[Ray is looking bored bored bored. He has a toothpick stuck in the corner of his mouth, and he's throwing a ball from one hand to the other, sometimes scrambling after it when he misses- it's astigmatism, okay, he just doesn't see all that good.]

Alright, so I got a question. Not everyone here's from Earth, whatever, but most of you are from some kinda place with some kinda rules and laws. And I figure a bunch of you have gotta be law enforcement yourselves, y'know, statically. [sic]

Now me? I'm just a regular schmo, city cop worked his way up to Detective. I didn't always wanna be a cop, but I tried it out and it stuck. Chasin' bad guys, putting on the heat, lock 'em up. Bam-bam-bam. [He slams the ball into his hand three times, then sits forward and grins.] It's a job, right? Just like bein' an engineer in here.

[He misses it. He misses it a lot, actually; misses his partner and the job, the satisfaction of a puzzle and a chase and locking up someone who made the world a little more dangerous.] So the rest of you: what do you do? How's it work in your world?

[Added, a few minutes later:]

By the way: I don't have my ar here to race you in, but back home I'm the last guy you wanna get into a car chase with. [He may be exaggerating slightly, but who could contradict him?] Figure I gotta keep those instinct working. I'll be there in two hours, ready to go.

Comments

[poetontheinside]

[He grins and sinks back in his seat, back to throwing the ball from hand to hand.]

What, you think me busting my ass on the street's gonna be more interesting than space? Bev, you're kiddin' yourself.

[Actually, his life is pretty weird, and he knows it. But he can admit defeat where it's due.]

[dancingmd]

Don't sell yourself short! What may seem normal to you probably isn't to me. I'd still love to hear about what you do everyday.

[She pauses, then gives him an amused half-smile.]

Minus the paperwork, of course. Humans never have quite gotten over our love for bureaucracy.

[poetontheinside]

It's eighty percent paperwork and maybe twenty percent chasing bad guys. [He scratches at his jaw a little, smiling crookedly.]

Alright, okay. Listen to this one: I busted my ass on getting this one guy to come in, right? Total scumbag, you would not want to run into him in a dark alleyway. That fucker-- [he hisses, then backtracks] That douche damn near bit my ear off, only they bring him in and I ain't even allowed to grill him.

So I go a little too hard on the kid I am grilling, y'know, good cop, bad cop? Only with me 'n Frase it's always 'bad cop, weird cop', but it works. I end up punching a hole in the wall, and there's a dead guy in there. Wrapped in plastic, stinking the place up.

[he will pause here, for proper effect, and also so he can catch his breath.]

[dancingmd]

[The "fucker" earns an eyebrow raise - and the "douche" is somewhat confusing - but any questions she has about slang (or what sort of interrogation technique involves punching holes in the wall) quickly go out the airlock in light of the whole corpse thing.]

You found a body? In the police station?!

[poetontheinside]

Yeah, that's what I said. So Frannie comes in, right- uh, she's the civilian aide, but she's also the sister of the guy I went undercover as, so that's who she was during that time, y'know, my sister.

Anyway. Frannie comes and starts screaming her head off, all-- 'Oh god, he killed him, he really did it, oh my god!'

[He does a fairly convincing falsetto- he's trying to bring across a small Italian woman wearing a croptop, but the 'woman' part ought to be clear at least.]

[dancingmd]

[Beverly has to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing at that impression of Frannie. She's not sure the poor woman would much appreciate Ray's rendition of her, but Beverly mentally adds him to the list of possible actor candidates should she ever decide to put on a play here. Hell, Sokka and Ray alone would make a great two man show.]

So she knew who did it?

[poetontheinside]

I mean, she thought she did, right? [He shifts a little, puts his elbows on his knees while he talks.]

So what you gotta understand is that I was undercover back then. This guy went deep undercover with the mob, and they needed someone to take his place- make sure no one'd get suspicious. This guy Vecchio had a lot of pals, but apparently he had a temper when it came to his sister.

Frannie tells me one night, she went on a date with this guy and he got a little touchy- and Vecchio just about ripped his head off, said he'd kill him if he ever saw him again.

[dancingmd]

[Her eyes go wide. Well, damn, maybe those Dixon Hill holonovels aren't as inaccurate as she first thought. They totally are. Undercover detectives, the mob, shrieking women...]

So let me see if I have this straight: you were undercover as Vecchio, who Frannie thought murdered the man you found the wall... who was also an undercover agent?

[poetontheinside]

Vecchio, not the guy in the wall.

Yeah. [And he didn't even mention the Mountie and his half-deaf lip-reading flower-arranging wolf yet.]

[dancingmd]

[She forms a tent with her fingers and points at Ray with both hands.]

Okay. I think I got it. But I'm betting you're about to tell me Vecchio didn't do it, right?

[poetontheinside]

Bingo-bango. [He points at her, grinning softly.]

Only I didn't know that, Frannie didn't know that, Fraser didn't know that. But all of 'em are convinced he didn't, so we had to find out who did, right?

Frase, he, uh, he figures out that piece of drywall was pretty new, so he goes down to talk to the contractor who put it up, yada yada yada, but- there's still us, with a dead body, in the middle of a police station, right? And the Lieu comes in, tells us he wants the interrogation room we were in, 'cause they still wanna interrogate this guy.

Hey, how would you do it? Get a body outta there without raising suspicion, so you can figure out who really iced him?

[dancingmd]

Me?! [She shakes her head, taken aback by the question.] I don't know!

[poetontheinside]

Ah, c'mon, flex your detective muscles. Try to get into the situation.

[dancingmd]

[She puffs out a small breath and gives him a rueful smile.]

I'm afraid the last time I flexed my detective muscles, I nearly lost my job.