At Kitty's words Mike cusses vehemently under his breath before replying, "See, nothing but rocks up here," Mike says while rapping the side of his head with his knuckles. "I surely don't know Kitty, we will have to try and figure it out. Well crap!! I don't know, maybe it would be best to just start drawing straws.
A very pale Jimmy stares at Geoff. "I thought we were friends, Geoff. We've been cook and barman here for years now. It was strange enough when you pulled out that knife and gun, but trying to finger me? What were you thinking?"
Harold nods along to Geoffrey's r sponsee and then speaks upI say we stick a gun in Harold's face until he tells us something real. Ain't no way I can trust a man who hides behind words like that. You don't get that poetic without real trauma, but if you ain't gonna talk I can't take that risk. I'm sorry.
Mike looks between Jeremy and Harold thoughtfully for several moments before speaking. "Jeremy is there something you know," he pauses as he looks around apparently searching for something, "Or are you just beating on a bongo?"
A big dorky grin spreads across Mike's face as he nudges Harold with his elbow chuckling, "Ha! I am a poet and didn't even know it!"
Mike chuckles to himself over his perceived quick wit for several moments. "Oh, that's rich. OK, sorry, bad time to giggle like a wee school girl, pulling it together. How are you guys not laughing at that?? Anyway, Jeremy, you think you picked up on something about Harold?"
From behind the bar Marlene says softly; "Maybe he was giving us some information in case he's assaulted by the cops.... or maybe he's in contact with someone who is? Or he's just trying to rile things up...."
She shakes up a cocktail and gives it to him without anyone else getting near the drink. "Here's something shaken as well....."
Jimmy picks up a glass and begins wiping it dry.
"So what now? Harold tips like concrete foundation, and he's no Yeats, but I won't condemn him. I don't know what to do."
"I'd say we hope that someone protects the cops next target. Maybe we could all trust someone .... relay secret information - if anyone got any." Marlene wonders softly, holding the tray and tapping Jimmy on his lapel.
"Well, Harold" Geoffrey says picking up his Colt. "Jeremy is naming you as something we should fear, and ain't nobody pointing any other fingers."
He chambers a round and thumbs back the hammer slowly. His eyes dart around trying to watch everyone at once as well as for secret ninja cops in every shadow.
"You better speak up soon, or time will decide your fate. You a loyal Tiger wise guy or not?"
A very pale Jimmy stares at Geoff. "I thought we were friends, Geoff. We've been cook and barman here for years now. It was strange enough when you pulled out that knife and gun, but trying to finger me? What were you thinking?"
"Eh, don't be sore," Geoffrey says. "If somebody gotta be a sneak, I figger on starting with those I trusted the most first to prove it. It's always easy to start with someone you don't know."
He points at Jeremy, Corbyn, and Harold. "They're the easy ones to target...but that may just be the kind of misdirection the lousy coppers are counting on."
Gesturing to Mike, Kitty, Marlene, Jimmy, and Rick. "There's more of you...of us than them. The odds are greater that somebody I like and trust has been foolin' me all this time. That's amite upsetting."
Rick watches Harold to see any reaction the man may have to the accusations "Ya better say sumthin quick pal, I think yer maybe just inna wrong place at da wrong time, but on da udder hand Tony musta had his reasons fer who he brought in t'day, if ya ain't have sumthin ta do wit da Tiger ya shouldn'ta been let in inna furst place."
He looks to Jeremy and Corbyn as Geoff points them out "The two o' ya as well, I ain't pointin no fingas, we jus need infermation, I fer one'd like ta hear yer stories. What ya doin here tonight?"
Harold sighs
"Rick, was I not with you at the bar when the first murder occured? How could it be me?"
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"I told you my story the second I came in here Mr. Schroeder. I'm merely here for fun and to grab life by its majestic unicorn horn!"
"I'm afraid I must take Harold's side. I dont know where you got those injuries Jeremy, but I'd hazard a guess it was from when you raided MacGuffins. Now you're here to get that raise and desk job you've been working toward by taking all us innocent alcohol loving socialites to prison."
"Look, guys. I don't know Jeremy from the devil himself, but Mike's cautioned us all not to be hasty and let the ones with the skills sort us out. Mike's smart and he's been the bouncer here for a long time. I trust him."
"Right now it's two to one against Jeremy. If I tie it by voting for Harold, what happens then?"
Jeremy Gudwal's accusation seems to bring the ire and attention of both Harold and Corbyn towards him, and when the two start towards him, they are only held off by Jimmy C Smith's calmer words.
The commotion seems to have provided some distraction, however, enough for the gathered criminals to not notice that Mike Cooper has been uncharacteristically silent for this debate. This is because of the knife driven into his chest, with the doorknobs hanging off of it. Seems one of the badges has a sick sense of humour.
In Mike's pocket, you find a notepad where he kept notes about who was interacting with whom in the bar, but unfortunately, the page is dyed with blood and serves little use anymore. In retrospect, he should not have used a red pen.
Jimmy pales again. "Jesus,Mary and Joseph! Not Mike! He was a stand up guy. I've known him half my life.
"Do you really think Jeremy's a cop, Corbyn? Did I kill Mike by sticking to his plan?"
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"I find his injuries and his story suspicious. He claims to have followed me here from the previous establishment I was enjoying. I suspect he is a Police Officer in disguise, and that he sustained his injuries as the mob turned hostile in their attempt to escape incarceration. Being so vocal about my displeasure in the raid and my drive to find a new Speakeasy to retreat to, I assume he'd find me a good target to follow and chased me through the hidden escape in the book case and right through that door." Corbyn raises his index finger to the entrance, missing knobs and all.
Corbyn stares Jimmy right in the eyes and speaks without blinking in a low and serious tone: "That, and his aura is all manner of funny colors. There is something in the vibrations he gives off that just doesn't agree with me..."
Jimmy raptly follows Corbyn's elucidation until he reaches the auras. Then the young bartender kind of shivers and slides back down the bar while shaking his head.
"Rick, Geoff. I thought Corbyn was making sense there for a second, but he and Harold -- they're just talking nonsense. What should we do guys?"
"Mike!" Rick clenches his fist looking away from the motionless doorman "Damn coppers, he wuz my oldest friend... We gotta root em out, they'll pay."
He looks towards Corbyn as he explains his suspicions about Jeremy "So ya tink 'e's 'spicous cuz yer guessin 'e wuz in McGuffins wit ya? An' yer gonna stick wit yer story that y'ain't got no connection ta Tony, yer here by sum kinda coincidence?"
Jeremy sits in his corner and absently taps his fingers on his glass as he watches the groups form. Corbyn and Harold. Rick and Geoffrey. Jimmy and Marlene. Each pair that could be the coppers, each with a different angle to stay under the radar. He adds his fuel to the fire: "It's strange how the two of us who are seemingly the least coherent are both trying to pin the blame on the only person who could possibly take the heat off of them.
Kitty droops onto a bar stool, looking unhappy but resigned, as if nothing could shock her further. "Poor Mikey. He talked a lot, but he was a good egg. Wasn't he, Marlene? Kept the riff-raff out, for the most part. Wish he'd done a little better job, though. Then we wouldn't be in this fix," she confides in the other distaff member of the survivors.
"Wish the band were playing tonight so we could at least dance until we die. They had a band on the Titanic, even. One here seems fitting." She crosses her arms and shivers, despite the heat in the small, stuffy room.
"Well, sh*t..." Geoffrey says over Mike's death. After seeing what he was carrying, Geoffrey looks at the others.
"So he was asking to buy time so he could investigate? Guess that's all a waste now. Nuthin' left but gut instinct now."
"What's your gut tellin' ya now?" the line cook asks the room.
Marlene shakes her head slowly; "That's certainly an interesting idea Kitty...."
She walks over to the wireless, nearly bumping into Jeremy and tunes it to a soft swing music. "There if you want to dance...." The waitress glances across the room as she makes another round of drinks for anyone.
"Well Geoffrey, there's definitely some strange behaviour, I don't just mean under the circumstances."
Harold is frantically walking around the bar whispering
"how could they think its me
it just couldn't be
I just wanted a friend
now it could be my end"
Marlene smiles to the frantic gentlepoet wandering around the bar and puts a hand on his shoulder.
"People don't trust a rhyme,
It can deceive some time.
Don't tell a whopper;
Are you a copper?"
Swaying softly as she moves to the sound of the radio; "Seems like we do nothing, if the coppers attack anyone?"
"Remember it's still 6 to 2. The odds are good..... sort of. Just have to find a way of working out how to keep information confidential. Of course it does mean any information is probably no good."
"Was Mike the only one on our side who could spot a cop? Mike's death has really shaken me up. I'm not 100% sure he was right about waiting. The cops sure aren't."
"Somebody say something!" Geoffrey says his knife unconsciously gripped in his hand. "I-I'm not used to picking my own targets!"
"Fine! If that's the way of it then I'll not sit on the sidelines."
Geoffrey picks up his Colt off the bar ready to perform if needed.
"I don't agree with this..." Marlene says softly, polishing a glass. "Although I've few clues who the nark could be."
"Tell us, Marlene. We can protect you if you can finger the cops."
Rick shakes his head at Jimmy's question "Nah, not the only one, gonna be a lot harder witout him dough."
"Nah we can't just do nottin Marly... da Fuzz'll just whack us one atta time, we gotta figure out who's who quick." He turns to Corbyn "'fraid my 'spicions keep comin back ta you pally. You were real quick ta jump onboard ta defend the poet an' put Jer'my onna choppin block. An' yer story just ain't add up, no way nobody was gettin in here t'night 'less they were on Tony's list. If ya ain't got no connection ta da Tiger ya ain't got no business bein here, so 'less you got a better story'n it's jus' a coincidence ya were at m'guffins fer da raid an' now yer here fer dis I can't trust ya no way no how."
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"If you know anything Marlene speak now. My soul can't handle an eternity of remorse for killing an innocent man."
"Don't blame me for the lac of security around here Rick. I just walked myself in looking for a drink. If this list is so tight, explain to me how you managed to let 3 cops and a ninja in here in addition to myself. I'm shocked and offended you accuse me of being a liar!"
"I'm not a detective. I've no clue whom they are." Marlene sighs; "It's tricky - I don't think we should rub-out people on a whim of nerves." she adds calmly.
"I don't know. I trust Geoffrey to protect us, though. He and Corbyn must know something the rest of us don't." Kitty looks sadly at the recipient of her recent stitching job, regretting that so much work would be for nothing.
"Lack o' security my eye, dat door wuz locked an' guarded" Rick shakes his head he blinks and looks towards Kitty "You too Kitty? Well awright if ya tink da kid's dirty... Corbyn ain't wanna tell us why he's here, rubs me da wrong way... You I trust, I guess we'll see what he knows dat we don't I ain't gonna be happy wit him if he's wrong dough."
"He better be right, Rick. If he's not..."
Jimmy clears his throat. And remains silent.
As the criminals in the speakeasy start to gang up on the outsider, he attempts to escape their grasp but the popping of stitches and the sudden sharp pain that brings causes him to hesitate for a moment. That's all the time that's required for Corbyn, Geoffrey and Kitty to descend upon him and end his pain with two of them holding him back and the third driving the knife through his heart. But any search through his body or his pockets reveal that he is exactly what he said he was: a criminal.
There is a few quick gunshots and the shattering of the lights that illuminates the speakeasy, and it seems unclear from where. The legs of chairs scrape against the wooden floor as people move to stand up in reaction to the shocking noise. By the time a quick thinking criminal lights up a candle to see what's going on, it's too late to save the speakeasy's poet: he hangs from the rafter, swaying with a creaking sound. Among his personal affairs, there is a rhyming dictionary with notes in the margin. In a page with a folded corner, starting with 'bl' there is a note remarking, 'Unbound? Sud sound? Nothing good rhymes with bloodhound!'
Kitty trots to Marlene to grab the waitress's towel. Scrubbing the blood from her face (and smearing her makeup), she turns on Corbyn, furious. "I trusted you! I told you... I thought your absinthe-sipping lunacy was cover from the coppers. You rat!" She turns to Geoffrey. "Tell me you weren't in it with him. We've worked together so long... He misled you, right?"
Geoffrey is much more disturbed about Harold's death than Jeremy's despite the latter being proven innocent.
"I suspected he was the one Tony sent to check us all out. He commented about being able to trust me, so I got ta thinkin' he must have been able to confirm I was wise through and through."
Turning to Kitty, he says, "Don't fret, Kitty. Sometimes a man's death is the only proof of his words. He was wounded already. Jeremy probably wouldn't have lived through the night as it is without a real doc. I admit I had hoped that Harold and Corbyn had some better knowledge than me since they were the first two to agree on somebody, and already 'specting Harold had peeked under Jeremy's skirts like he may have done to me...it was a better shot than just waiting ta die."
He clears the chamber of his Colt and makes sure it's ready for action if needed before pulling back the slide and thumbing back the hammer.
"But given Kitty's point, Corbyn, you're right: any one of us here could have made the same mistake. I certainly did, and I think I still am. I said in the beginning it was easy to pick on the outsiders, and now all but one of them is dead, so that's leaving me with only those I've been trusting all this time."
Geoffrey turns a very angry face on Marlene, Kitty, Jimmy, and Rick.
"Right now, even if Corbyn turns out to be a rat, that means at least one of you is his partner."
He lifts the Colt up next to his face barrel pointing towards the ceiling.
"I opened my mouth real loud in the first few moments of decision making. Harold took notice and cleared me which is why he immediately offered me his drink to get my attention. I wouldn't be surprised if the Dirty Sleuth targeted me as well which is why he and the Silencer haven't taken me out...because they needed to find Mike and Harold first! Who cares about some peon in the organization, right coppers? You probably imagined my own fellas would get nervous with me brandishing weapons and lynch me themselves, and you'd get a two-fer-one!"
He taps the gun to his forehead.
"Now the way I'm figgering, at this point, tieing the vote only helps them, so that would normally immediately make you," Geoffrey points his gun at Jimmy, "and you," the gun moves towards Rick, "the most suspicious now since that's been your move every time someone looked cross-eyed at each other."
Geoffrey returns the gun to his temple.
"But that would only matter if you didn't know who in the room was your undercover pal. Unless Tony the Tiger got it wrong (which I doubt), these pair of aces knows damn well who their friends are, so they would never stop a vote for someone whose death they knew would only further their goal. So Rick, Jimmy as of now you've earned my trust until I have reason to believe otherwise."
Geoffrey smiles lazily, a coldness in his eyes as they swivel back towards Kitty, Marlene, and Corbyn. It's a killer's mask, ready to go to work.
"Which means you three are now the most likely. Corbyn because you keep trying to force a death, Kitty because she jumped in after me to help ensure a majority, and Marlene because she's done nothing at all to stop or encourage which suggests it's because she knew her partner was never the one in jeopardy, so why draw attention?"
"I dislike unnecessary bloodshed, especially without proof - Geoffrey. And you were mighty quick to jump on Corbyn's coat-tails with the accusation of Jeremy, now you think Corbyn's a no-good cop?" Marlene says looking down the barrel of Geoffrey's gun.
"Could it be that you are the one that knew their partner wasn't in danger and wanted someone lynched. That you spoke up vehemently earlier because you knew you could never be the target of the fuzz?" She moves closer to Geoffrey to look into his cold eyes as the barrel presses against her.
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"I aint no cop!" Corbyn shouts, slamming his fist onto the bar.
"It seems to me that not one of you remember me being the only one to defend Harold when the rest of you were openly suspicious about him yourselves. Think about it!"
"Could have been luck, Corbyn. We're all punching in the dark here. But I'm willing to accept your argument because I don't have anything else to go on. Right now I'd say Geoff's got the strongest defense. Harold offered Geoff a drink to show that he trusted him. It's thin. But it's something Harold did, and it might have meaning."
Jimmy looks at his longtime compatriots. "I just can't believe this. How could I accuse any of you?"
Shaking his head slowly the P.I. looks away from those that wrestled down Jeremy. He listens to GEoffrey talking and shrugs his shoulders after the speech "Well ya said a whole lot Geoff, but we still ain't able ta make any decent decisions from what ya said. Harold got me a drink too, an' like I said earlier when Jeremy pointed a finga at 'im, I figured he was a decent gus." Downing the last of his drink Rick adds "As fer tyin da vote I figure it'sa whole lot better 'n offin a legitimate wise guy... even now a tie ain't a bad idea, if we ain't certain we got da right Gus."
"A fact dat you seem ta have c'nveniently fergotten Mr. Corbyn, dat an' only Jeremy and Jimmy voted against Harold, an' Jimbo only did so ta tie cuz he ain't tink either of 'em were crooked, tuns out he wus right."
Looking to Jimmy Rick adds "In my book dat's a purdy good indication yer onna level Jimbo... We're inna real tight spot though. Ya got any ideas? Whisper in my ear if yer worried 'bout de others listenin"