Bright lights and promises, a pocket full of dreams, that's what they pay me to be
-Janis Ian
Standing with my back against the wall of the building opposite the KaibaCorp main entrance, I checked my watch. 3:20, ten minutes until my appointment with the big man. Sighing, I crushed out my cigarette underfoot and crossed the street.
Working with Seto Kaiba was a unique experience. Over the months I'd come to a grudging respect, maybe even genuine like of the man. I'd been in the detective business fifteen years, most of them specializing in missing persons. There was a pattern, a cycle of emotion most of those left behind went through. Panic, initially. Fear and anger, then hope then resignation and much as it hurts life goes on and people accept the inevitable. Mr. Kaiba was anything but typical.
Most of the time I found 'em. That was always better, though it was rarely a happy thing. Sometimes it was a body, people die, kill themselves, have accidents, get murdered. Those cases were wrapped up in a matter of weeks, usually. The longer cases were almost always runaways. Most of 'em walked on their own and weren't too excited to be unearthed. Various reasons people left - shame, fear, a desire to be free, it all came down to one thing in the end, wanting anything but what they'd abandoned.
I flashed my ID at the security guard and got waved through. Same guy as last month and the month before that. Pretty soon we'd be exchanging Christmas cards.
Same elevator, same hallway, different assistant. She checked my name, did something arcane with equipment and opened the door to the inner office for me.
I knew he'd be over there by the window, of course. I don't think I've ever walked in with him anywhere else, and I used to walk in daily. Then it was weekly and for the last half a year I darkened his door once a month. He conceded that much to reality, at least.
I waited the full minute while he stared out the window before I spoke. "Mr. Kaiba?" It was almost a ritual after all this time. He'd wait, I'd be formal, he'd sit at his desk and I'd give him my lack-of-progress report, dropping off the 'mister' and dropping in personal comments. And that's just what happened this time too and then it was over and still I wasn't leaving. Not quite yet.
"Look, Seto," I said from my chair across his desk, "While I got no problem taking your money, are you sure you still want to keep this up?" He shook his head at me and the stubborn, resigned expression on his face told me he'd heard the same thing from probably a score of a dozen of sources. Not that I'd expected any different but I felt I had to offer.
Like I said, I respected the man. Kind of felt sorry for him in a way though I couldn't decide whether his iron determination that the man I was looking for was alive and not missing by choice was something to be pitied or worried about. 'Cause the odds just don't work that way.
"Alright, then," I acknowledged and he smiled faintly. Yeah, I could read that smile, we'd been working together a long time. Nearly a year now, which is why I
still hadn't left.
"Next week..." His eyes snapped up at me then and stopped me in my tracks. I've seen a lot of things in those eyes of his but never anything that's made me afraid. Until now. There was unspoken warning and immediate threat, a promise of dark, dire things waiting just on the other side of the next minute... and somehow it was all the worse for the fact that it was delivered with the deadliest still expression I'd ever seen on a living human.
I'd give half my life to be able to have a look like that.
Though when I thought about it later, I wasn't sure I'd give up what he must have in order to wear it.
"I wouldn't," he said mildly, somehow managing to both offer and retract the threat at the same time.
'Your choice' was what he was saying,
'Don't cross that line'. I may make some mistakes from time to time but I didn't survive this long by being a fool.
"Whatever you say," I agreed, though I
still wasn't leaving. I also haven't survived this long by giving up. Stubbornness often makes the difference between success and failure in this business. I let him settle a minute, waited until he looked up at me again, faintly puzzled. "Look, just..."
take care of yourself was what I wanted to say, or maybe
watch out. I said none of it though.
I was at the door and I could still feel his eyes on me. Opening it, I found I couldn't just let it go. I had to say something, offer
something.
"Seto?" I turned, catching wary curiosity in his eyes before he masked it behind polite interest. "Take some advice from someone who's been around the block. Get away, go somewhere else, do something one hundred percent different." I waited for his stiff, angry nod before I slipped out the door.
He might fire me, but I'd said my piece. Even odds I'd see him next month. Walking out the huge glass doors of the KaibaCorp building, I lit another cigarette and set off for my next appointment.
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