The Door Goes “Click”
Michael
I think given the fact that agents Padden and Hall are now trading fire with the presumed suspect who happens to be wanted by a weird hippie-looking chick in Army Intelligence, I'm going to do something a little unusual to determine how close they stick to procedure in the immediate aftermath. I want to have Jocasta make a second Reaction roll (essentially a morale check) in absentia to see exactly what the two FBI agents do in the aftermath of trading fire with Frank. This is a 3d6 roll, you want to roll high in this case, and the modifiers will add up as follows:
Legal Enforcement Powers: +3 (full bonus since this is directly related to law enforcement)
Military Rank: +2 (as vets they give you full credence on your active rank)
Appearance: +1
Being shot at by a suspect wanted by shadowy intel agents: -3
For a net +3!
Leonard
>> 3d6+3 … 19
I rolled an unadjusted 16, so 19 total.
Michael
Oooof, nice.
In fact, that is the best possible reaction at 19+.
Okay, so what that means is that about 3 or 4 minutes after the gunshots are heard over Pacifica Radio, the phone that Jo gave to Agents Padden and Hall as a contact rings at Jo's desk. It's Agent Padden, out of breath.
"Ma'am," Padden says, "we spotted the suspect on a payphone in the lobby of the Empress Hotel. He drew a pistol and fired, Agent Hall returned fire but the suspect made his escape through the lobby and out the back door. We emerged into the alley and saw no sign of him. Like he vanished." Padden obviously seems a little distraught at this fact.
"Should we put out an APB with SFPD or keep this … in-house?" Padden realizes that it may be best for the feds to keep this thing discreet. "And if we do keep it in-house, should we bring in extra Bureau personnel?"
(Again, assuming as-read that for cover identities that we have a dedicated switchboard somewhere routing all our calls properly and providing cover. A lot of the basic tradecraft of having a Patron like SANDMAN we can take as-read.)
Leonard
"Hold off on the locals, Agent Padden. Our target has some very sensitive intel and we want to both limit his exposure and make sure we bring him in clean so we can find out who he's working with. Let's keep this in house for now. We really appreciate your cooperation on this and you've done a great job; I'll leave it to your discretion if you want to bring in any other operatives, but our watchwords should be location and containment. I'll speak to my superiors and get back to you immediately, but for now, let's focus on finding our man. As you know by now, he should be considered very dangerous."
Basically, Jo is gonna call the rest of the team over, debrief them quickly, and urge that we assemble a fast action plan. She wants to minimize cop exposure not only to keep a lid on this, but to keep our target alive, and to make sure we run him down but limit exposure overall because if he's really carrying around an ékimmu, we don't want it jumping from person to person.
Also she'll sweet talk the agents as much as possible so that they (a) keep cooperating and (b) feel like they have a personal stake in this rather than getting super procedural and leaking info we want under a tight heavy lid.
Michael
Also, the agents let Jo know that Mr. DiGiuseppe is confirmed to have a long-term room at the Empress (under an assumed name) and that the night manager has given the agents a key to the room. (They're waiting to investigate until they hear one way or the other from you/Army intel.) The night manager apparently says, "He's not here every night but he pays his rent at the top of the week, prompt as can be, much more responsible than most of the other residents. Never any reports of noise or disturbances up there, either. No guests, no whores, no booze, no drugs, no funny business. Model resident."
Bill
"If he hasn't heard about his pops, he might try to go to ground in Pittsburg. But we don't know. We don't know enough. I say go to the Empress and rifle for leads there first. Take two cars, in case we need to split to hit multiple places after."
Leonard
"Agreed. And we need to be ready to move fast, Doc."
Brant
Marshall leans against the conference room table and puts his hands to his mouth in a contemplative namaste pose.
“I think it unlikely he will make for Pittsburg. He is too close to his goal — I do not think he can risk leaving the table set like this.”
“Roger, I’d propose you take Mitchell with you in your car — Jocasta, you can come with me. We will take separate cars to the Empress and see what we can find. If he has used some … method to vanish, we can hope Mitchell can … suss it out.”
Bill
Roger would like to grab one of the guns; I think we had a spare I didn’t use in the ambulance. But other than that, he’s ready to jump in his car and speed off with Mitch.
Michael
(Absolutely okay to grab an ikoter. Given Archie has to go back to the City anyway, I guess it makes sense for a mini-convoy of all five PCs to head west from Livermore towards the Bay Bridge. The Librarian will remain here (and probably pull an all-nighter) doing Montgomery Block background research and manning the phones. If you all want to make arrangements to check in semi-regularly we can say Sophie keeps everyone informed as necessary, plus we have said that all our URIEL cars are equipped with radios/car phones.)
Leonard
Jocasta's ready to roll with that. She'll also ask if we should suggest that Agents Padden and Hall head out to Pittsburg — that way, we're covered if he does head there, and if not, it'll keep the feds out of our hair.
Bill
“I’d say it’s better to have the devil you know. We send those two off, it might be harder to get access. Plus I don’t really want them snooping into our little abduction, do you?”
Michael
(Also, the medications cabinet is accessible if people need a little "pep")
Bill
(Also just had to look up when the movie Convoy came out: 1978, so no singing the song.)
Jeff
(Also just had to look up when the movie Convoy came out: 1978, so no singing the song.)
Bill, don't tell me what I can't sing.
Bill
OK, yes, certainly Mitch, with his awareness out of time, can attempt to sing about a mighty convoy as Roger speeds into the Emerald City. Convoy! (Roger will now assume it’s the imperial march for Norton.)
Michael
All right. Roger and Mitch in Roger's car, Marshall and Jo in … Marshall's? And Archie heading home in his Dodge.
When we get there, what's the plan? Are Marshall and Jo going into the Empress to speak with the FBI team? Who's going to take the room key and black-bag Frank's room? Will we have Roger and Mitch drive around and do another Streetwise/Serendipity-aided street canvass, this time of the Tenderloin? Let me know and I'll set up some scenes and some rolls.
Leonard
We should take Marshall's car, or a Livermore fleet car, since Jo's is only big enough for two people and we might need to bring our man back, or at least some of his stuff. She'll definitely liaise with the feds; otherwise, I'll offer a couple of options and see what Marshall thinks. If he's there, I'll act as muscle and take him down, either with an ikoter or with a knockout technique in kliel; if he's not, I'd suggest we just grab as much of his stuff as we can and recon with the rest of the team after going through it to see if there's anything important. If Marshall can keep watch, I can use psychometry to see if there's anything crucial and hidden. (Obviously I'll wear gloves otherwise!)
Bill
I’m cool with hitting the streets around the Tenderloin. Or elsewhere. If Jo/Marshall find anything sending us out, they only need hit us up on the radio. If we get to him first, there’s always the back seat of the Chevelle. Trunk’s pretty roomy too, although I might need to pull the weapons out first.
Michael
Okay. So Jo heads into the (very modest) lobby, and Padden and Hall are there waiting. Most of the furniture in here has to date from the '40s and '50s: the scene of cigarette smoke and cheap wine is sunk into the carpets and walls. They've not called in any backup — yet — and the night manager is standing behind the "front desk" (it's behind wire mesh). No lookie-loos in the lobby, Padden mentioned on the phone their only witness was this manager. The residents are not too curious about what goes on elsewhere in the building after dark, and gunshots are not an alien sound in the Tenderloin. "Been waiting for you on the suspect's room," Padden says, showing the key.
(Not sure how Jo wants to introduce Marshall but his psych/CIA credentials give him all kinds of reason to be here. Archie less so, but I did want to check with Rob to see whether he had envisioned Archie coming into the building or not. Regardless, if Jo and Marshall want to handle investigating Frank's room we can do that now.)
On the Roger and Mitch side of things, I would like Roger to give me a Streetwise roll to kick things off. If Mitch is going to go off on his own, that's also fine, I have a rough idea of where Serendipity (and Weirdness Magnet) might land him, but I want to wait to see how Roger's roll and Marshall and Jo's investigations go before that.
Jeff
My plan is to start spiraling out around the hotel until I find something interesting, with my usual expansive definition of interesting. (Decent odds I'll get sucked into group of basement wargamers or something else useless, Mitch is aware that he's taking a risk by doing it this way.)
Michael
Roger's quick look around the Tenderloin and old Barbary Coast on the way into the City seems to suggest not an active police presence on the streets, but a ton of SFPD wooden barricades and other crowd control elements left on the streets overnight. Curious. So here's the deal with ol' Mitch. That dérive-style perambulation he's so good at seems almost immediately to trigger something in him once his feet hit the pavement a few dozen times: not a vision of a subduction zone or the flushed feeling that happens when pyrokinesis begins to bubble up in him. He's hungry. It's 11 pm and between all the driving back and forth between Pittsburg and Livermore and the ambulance shenanigans, and Mitch realizes a body needs food. And there's really only one place to go for quick quality food at 11 pm on a weeknight in the middle of the Tenderloin. Chinatown. Mitch sort of generally wanders off, in the direction of the (more or less) brand-new, Taiwan-donated Dragon Gate.
Brant
Marshall will trust Jo to handle interactions with the FBI agents, and will otherwise remain silent and somewhat mysterious. He can credibly give cover to whatever story Jo wants to tell them.
Bill
Roger is fully down for this. Fully on? Damn, where’s that groovy lingo when you need it? “Sweet and sour pork for me, let’s go!”
“And get me one of those German beers made in China they have. You know the one.”
Roger’s gonna walk into a neighborhood corner store, buy a pack of smokes, and start up a conversation with the clerk about what the hell parade of pigs came through what left all this crap on the street. “
Jeff
Awesome. Chinese. Awesome.
Bill
Jo doesn’t have creamy jade green eyes, does she? Checking for a friend.
Leonard
Crystal blue, sorry to disappoint.
Jo is basically going to give the feds a line about how these people with her — who it's doubtful they would believe are ASA — are an inter-agency task force, and strongly imply that it's a pretty high-security-clearance situation. If they buy this, she'll tell them to hang loose and keep anyone from gunking up the crime scene, and she'll take Marshall upstairs to the target's room to turn it out. We should grab anything of obvious interest, and she'll more or less use her intuition to suss out if anything we find is worth doing a psychometric scan of.
Michael
Roger’s gonna walk into a neighborhood corner store, buy a pack of smokes, and start up a conversation with the clerk about what the hell parade of pigs came through what left all this crap on the street.
Bill: The late-night corner store guy says, "You kiddin'? Tomorrow's the beginning of four days of Chinese New Year shit. Miss Chinatown pageant and parade is tomorrow. The streets are gonna be packed."
Awesome. Chinese. Awesome.
Jeff: As Mitch walks to the nearest late-night Chinese place, he begins to see a regular, repeating, tessellated pattern of hand-pasted posters on the walls of a bunch of the buildings in Chinatown. The same flyer, Xeroxed on light green paper, bilingual in both Chinese and English, asking citizens of Chinatown to come out and demonstrate against school busing, which they say is "destroying Chinese-American culture in San Francisco and removing our self-determination to raise our children our own way." A series of neighborhood associations have signed the decree, and a series of organizational meetings and City Council meetings to demonstrate and speak up at are listed. Mitch's hunger subsides. Give me an IQ check.
Jo is basically going to give the feds a line about how these people with her — who it's doubtful they would believe are ASA — are an inter-agency task force, and strongly imply that it's a pretty high-security-clearance situation. If they buy this, she'll tell them to hang loose and keep anyone from gunking up the crime scene, and she'll take Marshall upstairs to the target's room to turn it out. We should grab anything of obvious interest, and she'll more or less use her intuition to suss out if anything we find is worth doing a psychometric scan of.
Leonard and Brant: All right. Marshall and Jo head up to the fourth floor to Frank's room. The hallways of the Empress are, if possible, even more dire than the lobby was. Just a heavy stink of humanity, booze, vomit, and piss. The sconced lights flicker in the hallways; behind the doors occasionally one can hear the grunt and squeak of presumed prostitutes and johns, or a drunk screaming with the DTs. Jo walks up to room 405, she's got the key in her gloved hand and she goes to unlock the door. Jocasta, give me a Listen roll at a -6 to your skill, Marshall, give me an Observation roll at a -2 to your skill.
(I am making the executive decision, since Rob I think is away most of this week, to just send Archie home to his family but have him ready to come back if anything happens. Given the fact that most of the inhabitants of the Empress are locked away in their rooms, I don't think he'd be able to do many interviews. Besides, if Archie does want to use Esmology on the people who live in the Empress, he doesn't need to interview people, although I suppose that would provide a bonus. And I'm NOT recommending Esmology just because I like the idea of pure wholesome Archie being riddled with Corruption. )
Brant
>> SUCCESS by 5
Leonard
>> SUCCESS by 0
Assuming Listen is a Hearing check, Jo rolled a 9, which, at -6, is an exact success, but not over by any.
Michael
As Jocasta turns the key in the lock, she faintly hears (while Marshall clearly hears) an unmistakable, ominous "click" from behind the door. From the faint reverberations Jocasta felt in the key (she's no safecracker, but it was clear), this click seems to have been triggered by the lock opening. The two of you aren't certain, but it seems like there might be some kind of trap or trigger connected to the lock/doorknob combination of Frank's room.
Brant
Marshall closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.
Michael
(Nothing more seems to be happening, but I'm assuming Jocasta's perfect Body Control has her staying completely still at this juncture)
Jeff
As Mitch walks to the nearest late-night Chinese place, he begins to see a regular, repeating, tessellated pattern of hand-pasted posters on the walls of a bunch of the buildings in Chinatown. The same flyer, Xeroxed on light green paper, bilingual in both Chinese and English, asking citizens of Chinatown to come out and demonstrate against school busing, which they say is "destroying Chinese-American culture in San Francisco and removing our self-determination to raise our children our own way." A series of neighborhood associations have signed the decree, and a series of organizational meetings and City Council meetings to demonstrate and speak up at are listed. Mitch's hunger subsides. Give me an IQ check.
I can never remember if Mitch's IQ is 12 or 13, I have to look it up every time. It's 13.
>> SUCCESS by 1
Michael
School buses crisscrossing the City every day now, with anger up everywhere about the busing program meant to diversify and desegregate the school system … the realization rises to the surface and sticks in Mitch's head that Frank has to be a school bus driver. There's no other explanation for everything in his letter, the focus on a sacrifice that absolutely fits the number of kids on a school bus, everything. And this part of town, the area roughly bounded by the Transamerica Pyramid, Chinatown, the Tenderloin, and the former Barbary Coast, must have dozens on the streets every morning and afternoon. School is in tomorrow and Friday and then there's the February holiday/Washington's Birthday next week where the kids will be off for a week. If Frank is going to act to take these kids, further considering the fact that the heat is now on him, it's going to be tomorrow. The energy around here is just too much specifically pointing towards this to ignore.
As far as any sign of Frank himself (or History B) is concerned, nothing has really triggered Mitch's Detect ability thus far.
Jeff
Mitch spins around and rushes in the direction of Roger and the hotel at a dead run.
Leonard
Jo steels herself against the door, exercising every ounce of body control she has. She tries to remain extremely calm, breathing at a reduced tempo, and hisses to Marshall, "Get Padden and Hall. Tell them we need an EOD team here as quick as they can come."
Brant
Marshall will head downstairs and convey that message to Padden and Hall. Then he will get on the two-way and see if he can hail Roger.
Michael
Done and done. And yeah, I think this is a good place to leave off for next time. Probably will start with a Body Control roll for Jo Monday night.
(Among other rolls, given the stress. Also, has anyone else other than Jocasta popped a modafinil yet? I just discovered it's more likely that SANDMAN is still using adrafinil, by the way; it was "discovered" by a French lab in 1974 so I'm guessing it was invented in the top secret SANDMAN/MK-ULTRA labs of the mid-to-late '60s.)
Brant
While Marshall was waiting for his car to be brought around to the carport at Livermore, he 100% definitely did a line of coke in the men's room. Aside from that, he's not on anything.
Bill
Roger is smoking like a chimney and sad Mitch didn’t come back with that beer, but otherwise nothing.
Michael
Okay, so here's how I picture things unfolding. Jo needs to stay absolutely still. But this stressful situation might lead to a flashback. Leonard, give me a Flashbacks roll, looking for anything but a 6 or less. If you pass that roll, give me a Body Control roll with no penalties. If you fail that roll, give me a Body Control roll at a -5 to your skill. Marshall heads downstairs as quick as possible and tells Padden and Hall to get the bomb squad. Not a problem, no roll required, given Marshall's charisma and Jocasta's authority. They go out to their car to radio FBI HQ and Marshall heads to his car to radio Roger. Mitch heads back to Roger's car, parked outside a late-night corner store, at top speed on foot. Roger's having a cigarette when two things happen simultaneously: Mitch appears from around the corner back from Chinatown in an awful hurry, and Marshall's voice comes through on the two-way in his car. And over in Pacific Heights, Archie slumps home after a long 14-hour day and … I dunno, makes himself a cup of Postum. laugh
Leonard
Flashbacks.
>> SUCCESS by 9
Body Control.
>> FAILURE by 1
Ugh, prepare to scrape a well-meaning but traumatized woman off the walls: passed the Flashbacks test (rolled a 15), but failed the first Body Control roll by 1 point (rolled a 14) and failed the second Body Control roll at -5 by four (rolled a 12).
No idea if Combat Reflexes will be of any help here but they're probably my only hope.
Please remember me as someone who died proving that taking methamphetamines is a bad way to prepare for standing perfectly still.
Michael
Oh, sorry, I should have said that second Body Control roll was if you failed the FLASHBACK roll. So you only failed one Body Control roll by one. Whew! Now, luckily, all you needed to do was avoid the critical failure on the Body Control roll to avoid any sort of … being plastered onto the walls, but here's the upshot of the regular-level failure: you are literally going to have to stand here and keep the key in precisely the same position until help arrives. You don't trust your own nerves and ability to de-trip this. You're going to need expert lockpicking and demolitions help to extricate yourself.
But yeah, a few more beads of sweat drip down Jocasta's normally steely face than might ordinarily be there. All those years of meditation and alpha wave control is crumbling slowly in the face of imminent possibly explosive danger.
(thank you, dice, for the unexpected drama :D And yes, for the record, Combat Reflexes will definitely help if something unexpected were to happen.)
Brant
This can prob wait till Monday but if Marshall is able to raise Roger on the radio he is going to inform him of the situation and ask, “What’s your background in, um, disarming door-based boobytraps or explosives?”
Bill
"Jesus Papa. (you aren't seeing him crossing himself). Let me grab a bag, and I'll be right there."
Michael
(Yeah, I'm beginning to think the actual extrication of Jocasta/the rest of the hotel from this peril should wait until we're all together because it'll be far more dramatic live.)
Leonard
"Hmm," thinks Jocasta, reaching down into a hidden reserve of dan tien. "Well done, Menos. You've added another important life experience to your résumé. Oh and look! All the men have abandoned you again."
Michael
So basically the only thing I need to know before Monday is if Mitch is going to say anything to Roger when he makes it back from Chinatown.
Or, indeed, if Roger is going to convey the current situation at the Empress to Mitch.
Bill
Roger has to get stuff out of the trunk, so he's not running off before Mitch can get there.
Jeff
It really depends on timing, I think. Mitch would want Roger to pass along to Marshall and Jocasta (and through them the FBI and the hammer of the state) the importance of cancelling the buses in the morning, but if Roger is already grabbing his little black bag, plainly that's going to take priority as an immediate seconds-count situation rather than the almost-immediate minutes-count situation which is the buses. Mitch most def isn't sitting on this information, though, he's Arthur Rostron throwing coal in the fires and figuring five minutes might be the difference between someone surviving and not.
Bill
Roger's gonna wave Mitch to just come with him, then, since he doesn't know what kind of police stuff might come up and keep Mitch from getting in to talk.
He'll radio back to Marshall, "On the way ASAP over and out," hit the power locks (Chevelle options, baby), and start running down the street. Mitch better keep up.
Jeff
By GURPS rules Roger runs 20% faster than Mitch, actually.
Bill
I'm sure what Roger's carrying slows him down by some rule or other. I wish I'd asked for 20" of rope right about now, but it'd be a bit cumbersome...
Jeff
Mitch spends too much time drinking whiskey and rye down by the levy and not enough time on the track
Bill
Then you'd definitely notice Roger has a bottle of rum in one hand.
Michael
(hahahah YES)