The man known as Ivan was not a detective by any stretch of the imagination.
When he wanted to investigate a man, he went straight to the man and started investigating.
To that end, he had made himself an appointment to see Nicholas Brown, Attorney At Law. As both he and Mr. Brown were very busy, he had not taken up either of their days informing the other man of this appointment. He had instead decided that it would simply be a better, more efficient use of both of their time for him to show up promptly at the scheduled hour, and that was what he did.
As striking as Ivan’s cold Slavic appearance was, he was something of a social chameleon. He could look important, if he needed to. He could look busy, if he wanted to. He could look as though he belonged, if he chose to. In order to infiltrate a law firm, he did all three.
When somebody, an assistant or intern or somebody else who did not look important and barely looked as though she belonged, stepped up to timidly challenge his presence by way of asking if she could help him find somebody, he simply demanded that she fetch him a coffee, and then hurried on his way. If knowing that the mousey little nobody was in charge of fetching coffee didn’t prove he belonged, nothing would.
He was safely ensconced in Brown’s office when the attorney returned from lunch. He stood in the corner of the room that would be screened from sight by the opening of the door and waited, cleaning his fingernails with a long, sharp metal tool. When the door had opened and closed, he stepped behind the oblivious man and poked him in the back.
“Hello, Nicholas,” he said. “I have some questions, for which I desire answers. Additionally, I have an ice pick and the desire to use it. I will leave this place having satisfied one desire or the other.”
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Awesome!! Ivan is my kindof guy. That sounds exactly how I’d act in his situation. No B.S. No redtape. Just cut the core and get stuff done. Haha, I love the characters in this story.
Ivan rocks!
didn’t prove he belonged, then nothing
“Then nothing would”, perhaps?
Awesome story, love this and ToMU. You rock AE!
I think you want to add a closing quote character at the end.
Hmmm you spelled assistant wrong in the 5th paragraph.
“When somebody, an assitant or intern”
I
Poo, that didn’t show up properly. I tried to make the little heart-shape with an angle-bracket and a 3 and I guess the blog software thought it was HTML. Let’s try again using code for that…
I <3 Ivan.
Nothing like the direct approach for getting answers!
assitant –> assistant?
Assassassin.
Hello, Nicholas,” he said. “I have some questions, for which I desire answers. Additionally, I have an ice pick and the desire to use it. I will leave this place having satisfied one desire or the other.”
my vampire larp character with a penchant for knives is stealing that line.
I’m not going to manage an update tonight as I managed to bang the hell out of several parts of me including my dominant wrist due to unexpected!new kitty. See TOMU for details.
I’ll do tomorrow and try for five again next week though.
Oh, how I love Ivan. Somehow, though, I don’t think he’d appreciate fangirls.
@alexander: Yes, I think my vampire larp character with a penchant for knives and kicking people in the balls is also going to steal that line.
Nicholas Brown: Attorney At Law and proud upholder of the fine Russian tradition of being assassinated by ice picks. Poor old Trotsky.
Incidentally, the bodyguard who was kidnapped and buried in lye during an earlier attempt was my half-great-uncle-in-law. Or something like that.