2014.05.04 - Clean as Crystal

Police work is a complicated, confusing business. For the vast majority of the time, you live for that big bust, the career defining collar or raid that will set your name in the historical annals of other blues. The biggest the bust, the better, the thinking goes. But then there is the other side of that coin: that when you do finally make that case, find the big case that will define your career for years to come? Its a lot of damn work, and after the hundredth hour you start to wonder if it was every worth it. Police work is a complicated business, and quite often a thankless one.

These are the thoughts that are running through Jim Gordon's mind when another series of clear plastic containers are pulled into the evidence clearance and processing unit, this set having been taken from a raid another historical Sionis home. "Over there," the commissioner barks. "And double up, one box at a time. Don't stop to investigate anything else right now, we just need it bagged and tagged, we can get in-depth latter." Spinning a lit cigarette between his fingers, he watches as his officers start to unpack the seemingly endless line of confiscated material, his eyes flickering towards the prominently posted 'NO SMOKING' sign, squinting at it as he takes another drag. "You have the day I'm having, then we'll talk," he mumbles. Yes, Commissoner Jim Gordon is talking to a sign. It's been a long day.

"I've been having that day since April 21st," Edward Nygma's voice cut out, clearly echoing down the hall. His custom trenchcost was a serviceable brown, keeping dirt and grime from showing, but the brilliant green of his tie and suit was visible at his collar. He stopped short of the other man; his shoulders were relaxed, his posture as nonthreatening as he could make it. Edward Nygma was a man who wanted something, but didn't want to fight to get it. Best to come with an easy smile and open hands.

"A moment of your time, police commissioner? I promise to keep it to small words and few questions if you'll let me take you away for a moment?"

Gordon stiffens at the sound of a certain voice coming up behind him. He stares at the No Smoking sign again, as if to blame it before turning and blowing a cloud of smoke in the general area of the face of Edward Nygma. "Mr. Nygma. What a pleasure to see you," he says, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "I suppose I haven't had the chance to thank you properly for all of...this..." he adds, gesturing towards the chaotic scene behind him with his cigarette. The smoke eventually is settled between his lips as he lifts a graying red eyebrow. "A moment? Why not. Your discovery is taking up every other waking moment of my life, whats one more?" he says as he starts to move. "Step into my office."

Edward's lips jerked up in a smile that was less friendly. "Should I have let them continue to turn children into murderers?" A wholly rhetorical question, and they both know it. He didn't bother to wait for an answer, following after Jim and shutting the office door behind him.

Still, despite his brief moment of sarcasm, Edward's respectful enough to sweep his hat off and let his hang from his fingers. Jim Gordon's a good cop in a town that chews good cops up and spits out the seeds. He deserves that much, at least.

Paused just within the door, Edward's approach to Jim's desk was slower, deliberate. "Is it really that difficult? Piles of evidence -- enough of a paper trail you could see patterns back generations." His eyes cut to the side, green and sharp. "Well... I could see them." Not everyone was Edward Nygma, after all.

Closing the door behind them, Jim makes his way around his desk and sits down. The old wooden chairs creeks, another relic in an office that looks like it hasn't be touched up in nearly three decades, a piece of history in the otherwise technological expedient police headquarters. The computer on his desk looks out of place and strange; it also looks mostly ignored.

Gordon aggressively snuff out his cigarette in a rather full ashtray on his desk, the next moment lifting it to dump it out into his trashcan, also filled with smokes. He glances up at the infamous puzzler, turned informant, and adjusts his glasses by the arm up his nose. "Of course you did the right thing," he sighs at the former Riddler's egotistical attitude. "I just wish you had come to us quietly, rather than plastering it all over the media and forcing our hand to move at this speed. It's not difficult, it's just..." He sighs. "Time-consuming. And that's not taking into account the regular business-as-usual the rest of my force has to do." He twitches his mouth slightly, a tell-tale sign he's frustrated. Gordon is an infamously bad poker player. "But I don't say thank you sarcastically or ironically. I respect and honor those words too much. So thank you, Nygma. Even if its made my work days feel like work weeks."

Things Edward Nygma does not expect or know how to deal with: anyone actually not treating him like he's a piece of crap. There's that brief moment where he's now a thirty-something man there, he's just-- looking at Jim like the kid he was, the kid who was smacked down for being too smart, never acknowledged for being someone worth having around...

Then he smiles, broad and eager to please. It's like dealing with a kicked puppy; he cringes and waits for the boot, but give him a kind word and a gentler hand and suddenly he's ready to wag his proverbial tail and do tricks.

"You're welcome," he said. "I was hoping, despite this-- flood issue, if we could... establish some lines of communication so that maybe it doesn't quite need to work this way. Maybe less media circus next time. I have-- things that I need to consider, now."

Namely, a thirteen year old boy waiting to be picked up from school and taken home and treated like a decent human being instead of a budding killer.

Gordon nods his head, furrowing his brow in thought. "That would be my preferred way of operating. I do understand your eagerness, and this?" He points towards the windows, through which the men scrambling and catalog everything collected is clearly visible. "This is a big deal. I'm not sure if in your same position, I wouldn't have done the same thing." He stops, reaching up to brush his chin as if to think that through, light softly reflecting off of his lenses.

"You may have heard...rumors about me," Gordon eventually says, speaking slowly now, deliberately. "Rumors about how I do things." He reaches down, pulling out a business card and tossing it across the table. "That's the best way to get in touch with me," he says. "The fax number is actually an open tip line, one that I give to a handful of inner circle informants and brokers that I have confidence in. It's among my trusted inner circles of information of what goes on in this center."

He eyes Nygma rather directly, his eyes narrowing behind his thick lenses. "I hear though that you're clean as crystal these days. Is that true?"

Edward approached again-- reaching out to take the card. It was an old habit to flip it, palm it; it vanished into his hand like had never been there on the table at all, didn't exist. He was still a showman at heart, Edward was. A thief's tricks were still amusing for some.

"Let's not mince words. I know how you work, because I know how I used to get caught." He finally sat in oe of the aging wooden chairs-- convinced they were kept because they were uncomfortable and would keep visitors from getting too relaxed in Comissioner Gordon's presence.

"I'm clean. You don't get visits from the Bat that end peacefully if you're not," he replied. "He do the 'go ahead and talk, I'm grappling away mid conversation thing and you'll ever notice' to you, too?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Gordon says flatly. It's a line he's had years practicing, and it almost sounds convincing at this point, if it wasn't quite so ludicrious. He does lift a brow slightly that he and Batman are on good terms, but doesn't dig. That's a conversation for another time. "And I am assuming that your previous associates are well aware that you've flipped?" he says, continuing to pry. "I mean, I suspect most of them do own TVs..."

Gordon sighs, rubbing his temple slightly as he leans back in his own chair, a slightly groan of complaint rising from the furniture. "I only ask because you dug up something big here, and again we're very grateful. But quite frankly, you're more used to me as an ear on the inside; I got plenty of eyes and ears on the outside, and my own think tank of big brains." He points slightly. "But if I had a big brain, who also could talk to the bosses and nutjobs? That would be a hell of an ace to have."

"I'm sure you don't," Edward said, amusement quirking his lips again. Yes, that was quite the practiced line, delivered with perfection.

"Look the Joker tried to kill me. Twice. A few of my former cellmates show up now and again to ask for help on things they won't bring to the police. It happens. But I'm not who they come to for heists anymore, or advice on how to bring down the Bat." He wants to keep it that way. Batman also wants to keep it that way. It behooves Edward to keep his nose clean. "It's safer for everybody if I stay in a certain... gray area. Sometimes even a crook has problems he needs solved legally. Then there were things like The Owls..." he shook his head, frowning. "They were just too big. And they were bad for everybody's business. I had two parties hire me for that case, and one of them remains anonymous to this day... and I'm totally okay with that."

Gordon might be a lousy liar, but he is a damned good cop. And part of that is reading people's expressions and mannerisms, and he sees that Edward is dedicated to this whole idea of going straight. He nods his head slightly as Nygma goes through his explanation of his current status. "Hell, if the Joker wasn't trying to kill you, I'd wonder if you weren't already dead." He reaches up instinctly scratching at his neck. Some old phantom pain from an altercation with the Clown Prince?

"Still, you clearly have your ear to the ground," Gordon says evenly as he sets his hand back down. "And people come to you with cases they don't to us. Now I'm not asking you to disrupt your customer's confidence, but you clearly know when something deserves our attention, and when it doesn't. And after this?" He takes a deep breathe. "After this, I can assume you're on the up and up. Just know, if and when you make me regret that choice?" His nose neighbor twitches again at just the thought. "I don't take kindly to being lied to, Nygma. So I would advise against it."

A muscle jumped in his throat. Edward contained his brief flare of temper. Jim couldn't know. "I don't lie." The subtext was 'ever', but he wasn't going to spell it out for him if he didn't have to. "So you can trust me to be forthright with you."

He tried to relax after that, but the damned chair was doing it's job. There was no way to get comfortable in it. Maybe it wasn't just the chair, though. It was Gordon, too. Some misty memory of... God knows what? Being in holding, perhaps. He couldn't place it, crossing this man the way.... before.

"I think we understand each other, at the very least. But... I do need to ask a favor. A terrible way to begin a working relationship, but it's one only you can grant. It isn't for me, though-- it's for Johnathan." The McHeigh heir had -- mysteriously changed hands with undue legal speed, and for that, Edward was grateful. But he was still a challenged young man who'd been grossly abused at the hands of his family in the name of a sick cult of wealth and blood. "There are some effects he'd like, but getting through the McHeigh family estate's impossible short of-- illegal methods. But if anything turns up in the seized properties, if they could find their way to my brownstone, I'd appreciate it. And I know his horse, Athena's with animal control right now, but there's a stall waiting for her elsewhere. I can arrange for her care, and I think it would be... theraputic for the young man to have a connection to a living thing that loves him unconditionally and works with him to a positive end."

For his part, Gordon looks perfectly comfortable in the ancient chairs. Granted, hes had plenty of practice to find just the perfect spot so it doesn't torture his back. At the mention of favors, he frowns slightly be remains silent, listening to what Nygma wants. He considers the request by glancing skyward, folding his hands behind his head as he starts to make a low thoughtful noise in his throat.

"I'll see what I can do," he says, not looking away from the ceiling for the moment. "The horse is certainly going to be tricky, but I know that they've cleared most of our living resources as clean of anything illicit, much to my surprise." The Commissioner finally looks back into the face of the man in his office. "What other sorts of items is he missing?"

"A few small effects. Books, items from his room. It's nothing too important, just things a young man needs to keep him from wearing the same three outfits and todo his school work, mostly. I' afraid his private academy has been... less than welcoming to the transition of his guardianship." In short: they don't like the ex-criminal outting their posh, rich friends as criminals.

"I'm honestly not sure which'll be more difficult to shuffle from the McHeigh ranch; personal affects or the horse. But both can be important to the boy's recovery and normalcy."

And like it or not... Edward was invested. He hadn't expected to be, but as he was 'Dr. Riddle' work the boy mentally... he was certain that he needed to know the boy was safe. He'd been betrayed by those intrusted with his damaged mind... He didn't want the boy to suffer alone, after a similar pain.

"Sounds reasonable enough. Tell you what, when we catalog the McHeigh property, I will call you in and we can see what we can set aside for you to claim for the boy," Gordon says, slowly putting this plan together. "It will have to wait until processing and examination follows, to make sure nothing is off about the products he needs. But if everything looks kosher, no reason to release them to be used." He shrugs, slowly standing as the officers are beckoning him into the other room. "Now if you'll excuse me Mr. Nygma, unless you have any other requests this moment will have to come to an end, as I'm needed elsewhere. We square?"

"I believe we are square," Edward said, happy to unfold from his uncomfortable seat. He extended his hand -- gloved but open -- to the other man. "A pleasure, Commissioner. I'll see you again in the near future, then." His card had already been pocketed, and Edward felt a little better about having it.

This could work. He could be on the right side, and still gain something of value.... he could get respect.

A firm handshake was exchanged, eye contact made. "Glad we had this talk, Nygma," Gordon says earnestly. "And if I can speak frankly...I'm happy to see you on our side. We need as many eggheads we can get, and you certainly fit the bill." His tone suggests he means it as a compliment. "And for what it's worth? I'm rooting for you. Good luck, Edward." With that, Gordon lets go of the handshake and opens the oaken door of his office. Stepping out, he strides towards the officer waving wildly at him, soon finding himself doing a quick tutorial on proper itemization numbering.