Chapter Text
If you told Fusco today was the day, he got thrown into something out of an action movie, he’d think you’re crazy, but here he was, helping keep the daughter of one of the dwindling families in New York City safe from the likes of Dominic.
Should’ve told that man in the suit off, but he needed to find answers regarding the Jane Doe, the last thing he wanted was having to go back to his captain empty handed… again.
With Cassandra close to him, Fusco continued through the streets of New York City, trying to bring her somewhere safe, but fate has a funny way of making his day.
For starters, every pay phone they passed seemed to start ringing on their own.
Fusco wouldn’t have answered them, but Cassandra had to use the bathroom, so they were stuck in a bodega for a bit, and he was getting fed up with the eternally ringing phone in his ear.
The moment Fusco took up the phone in his hand, he heard a man talking to him, almost as confused as he was, asking if he had encountered someone matching the description of the guy who dumped Cassandra on him and left.
As fate would turn out, Fusco was thrown into an even more ludicrous situation, here he was talking to someone who was vaguer than the other man, asking questions, and Fusco not having any answers.
However, he seemed to know more about Fusco that’s reasonably comfortable, that Fusco went far as looking around the bodies, his dark eyes slowly going around the aisles, thinking someone crank calling, but no, that would make too much sense.
“Look, I don’t know where he is, he dropped a broad off with me and gone off to do God knows what,” Fusco asserts that he didn’t know where Reese went, only that he’s now in charge of Cassandra.
The only thing about this situation was that Cassandra was reasonable, unexpected, but Fusco wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Not that Cassandra was a horse, pretty good looking with all things considered, but he would be facing some heat if he broached the idea.
Anyhow, the man on the phone, Fusco aptly nicknaming him as a geek by the tone of his voice, informed him that Dominic had dispatched assassins all over New York City with the explicit instructions they kill Cassandra.
“If they’re after the broad, wouldn’t they be after the Ventura’s son?” Fusco brought up as the geek informed him everything that’s been happening before, he was involved with this conspiracy.
Affirming this with a sigh, the geek informed Fusco that he’s working on keeping the Ventura son safe, but he couldn’t be in two places at once, so he asked Fusco to keep an eye on Cassandra while he worked on tracking down their mutual friend.
Mutual friend?
Since when?
“Trust me, Detective Fusco, you would be wise to follow my advice,” the geek reminds him.
Exhaling sharply, Fusco’s forced to go along with it, as he hung up Cassandra stepped out of the bathroom, apologizing for the trip, but Fusco waved his hand as he tells her that he didn’t mind.
You gotta go, you gotta go, he summed.
With Cassandra at his side, Fusco followed the geek’s advice, keeping his eyes peeled for anyone suspicious as he went with her to the only place he knew where she’d be safe.
The geek never said he couldn’t.
“You think the police will protect me?” Cassandra questioned Fusco’s reasoning for wanting to bring her to the precinct.
Shrugging, Fusco stated that he didn’t know where else to hide her and she might as well get antiquated with New York City’s finest for the foreseeable future.
Besides, she’s safer there than out in the open like this.
“Trust me, I read his sheet, this man was willing to have his men open fire in a shoe store during rush hour,” Fusco summed how Dominic operated to Cassandra.
She might not believe him, fine, but Dominic wasn’t an ordinary man.
“But the only thing standing between him and that’s the Five Families,” Fusco then added as he walked across the road with Cassandra keeping up with him.
Picking on the Bellagio and the Ventura families is far easier for Dominic than the unified Five Families.
That didn’t mean he didn’t have any plans for the families, however.
Wouldn’t past Fusco if he didn’t put them in a stranglehold and make them bend the knee to him, becoming extensions of his operation, kill them as he goes if they disobey him.
Unlike anyone Fusco was taught about during the course of his career, Dominic was smarter than the average mook Fusco picks off the street.
Scary, too.
And that’s saying something.
Unlike the families with their biases and insistence of sticking with their olds ways, Dominic is pivoting more and more, and Fusco didn’t like it one bit.
On their way back to the precinct, once more things took a turn, and Fusco wasn’t happy, that geek called his cellphone and warned him that a woman is trailing them, giving him the description down to a name.
Lucille Carlin.
Struggling single mother, the type that Dominic can coerce into working for him on the belief that her children were provided for that Fusco thought he can talk her down from making a huge mistake, if not for the geek warning him that she had already killed several people for Dominic.
She used her stature to garner sympathy in the past, so proceed with caution if she talks to Fusco.
Which also meant she could use it to get into the precinct.
“So where do I stash her?” Fusco questioned the geek’s plan.
He heard silence before the geek said, “Well, detective, that can be arranged. I’m in a bit of a situation, I’d like your help.”
Scoffing as he narrowed his dark eyes, Fusco questions, “My help?”
There’s no way his captain’s going to approve the hours he’s putting in!
“It’s unexpected, I know, but I cannot find our mutual friend and my hands are tied, so I’d like to illicit help from you, if you don’t mind,” the geek tells him.
Recoiling, Fusco questioned, “Still?”
He heard a sigh as the geek explained, “It’s imperative that you help me, detective, if you do so, I promise those parking tickets won’t go to warrant. Among other things.”
Already sensing it, Fusco snorted, “You blackmailing me?”
He heard back a quick, “Perhaps.”
Fusco said some things that slipped through his mouth as he didn’t take the threat of blackmail very well and for the most part the geek took it well.
A little too well.
Like he has enough cards to stack a poker tourney.
Fusco received directions by the geek before the geek conveniently dropped the call, leaving him to walk with Cassandra down 18th Street when the geek’s directions took him to a work van from an internet provider left parked in front of the Target, in the handicap zone, no less.
“Why are you taking me to a van?” Cassandra wasn’t pleased by the detraction.
Confused as she was, Fusco couldn’t come up with words, but the blackmail held over his head was enough for him to summarize, “Work with me here.”
Following the geek’s request, Fusco goes up to the van, glimpsing the driver’s side, there he sees keys in the ignition.
Instructing Cassandra to get inside the passenger’s side, Fusco opens the driver’s side.
Upon sitting on the driver’s side seat, Fusco gets another phone call from the geek, who then proceeded to give him directions that will get them somewhere safe.
He topped it off with, “Oh, could you check the back when you get there?”
Fusco recoils as he looked between the lines and asks, “What did you do?”
The geek responds, “I needed to hide him somewhere.”
Catching this, Fusco grew hesitant as he asks, “What are you talking about?”
The geek insisted that he hurry, the woman’s still tracking them, and she’s using a tactic that involves a stroller.
Fusco ought to know how easy it is to hide things in a stroller, as the geek proceeded to read off Fusco’s sheets.
“What about our friend?” Fusco asked about him.
The geek tells him that he’s on the hunt as they speak, hence why he tasked Fusco with this important task.
“Hurry!” The geek insisted.
To be continued… “A Drop of Poison”