Messy Business (Pt 2)

Messy Business poster by @ootron on twitter [1]

* Episode (must be logged into Patreon to view)

> **The Still**
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> Synopsis:
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> When winter came, my friend brought me a list of parts to buy, from hardware stores he knew. I had a truck. He had a little cash. He worked in Countinghouse, and passing through, I’d park the truck and pick up this or that. A heavy pot, a stand, some copper pipes. He stayed the night. I woke before the dawn, and poached an egg. I brought it back to bed. “I didn’t know you cooked,” he said, and then he pointed past my shoulder through the glass. The sun was rising, up above the hill. That evening in the woods, we built the still.
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### Opening Narration

> *Specialist Corson, start record. Article intake file #8421. Object: Blough City Lot #92-dash-338. A collection of photographic equipment, okay! Description: Let’s see… start with a walnut-coloured leather gear bag — with a shoulder strap and a stainless steel clasp, nice. Includes one camera, brown and silver, two lenses, a pair of binoculars, also brown and silver. Additional accessories seem to be from some sort of… portable dark room? Yeah… Each piece besides the developmental equipment includes a carrying case.*
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> *Condition: Mixed. Camera shows heavy use, damage to leather and metal. But it is operational. Lenses are in excellent and near-mint condition. Binoculars, likewise in good shape. Accessories are… a grab bag, sell them as-is.*
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> *Price? For the lot, let’s say 400 to start with, 15-20 incremental. 650 up front, minimum. Actually, you know what? You know what, put an asterisk on that. Let me just, set up the machine to—*
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> *Yeah, okay. Ah, comments and analysis: Where to begin with a lot like this? I mean… I guess I should start with the weirdest thing: the dark room. It’s… it’s weird. It’s like a little portable desk with containers for the chemicals, and a tiny bath basin for the film to develop in. This is some real ‘prosumer’ shit. But let me tell you, this right here? This is a nice camera! It has a sort of a retro aesthetic, like a lot of things in Blough City. Look for buyers with a penchant for the classics. Additional lenses are smartly chosen for surveillance work, which means it might take some massaging if you’re trying to sell to a bird watcher or something, but it’s not beyond your abilities, Momona. Binocs are solid too. Some fingerprints, a little oil on the metal, but the lenses are crystal clear. A real sense of presence when you look through ‘em. And that is just the mundane stuff.*
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> *I got curious when I read this was found out on some suburban rooftop in the Thicket near the, uh… the Blake Blossum scene? You read about that? Tricky stuff. So I thought maybe this was connected — I did a spectrographic scan, ran a quick membretic analysis, and it turns out this stuff didn’t belong to a private dick. This is Concern tech, friendo. This could ID outsiders, Peels, even other business folks like us. So, you sell to a normie, start at 400, 650 up front. But if you have a cross-towner on the hook? Bump that up exponentially. Or, chuck it. Sometimes it’s better for rare goods to leave circulation.*
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### Music

This episode's main theme samples the second movement of Franz Schubert's Piano Trio in E flat Major, from a public domain mark 1.0 recording sourced from the European Archive via museopen. The dial tone heard in the opening and closing is from a recording by giddster, via freesound, licensed under a creative commons 0 license.

## Cast

* Austin Walker as GM
* Chris Andrews/Agent Ryder (Ali Acampora)
* Agent Heard/Robber Twig (Keith J Carberry)
* Maggie Darcy/Agent Seals (Janine Hawkins)
* Florence Slowly/Agent Page (Jack de Quidt)

## Plot

The clouds have gathered and it has begun to snow, a rarity for Blough City.

The team gathers in a corner booth in The Diner around midday to discuss what they’ve found. Page tells the others about speaking to Romy about Blake and that she received a phone call from herself. Heard asks what the other her said, and Page said that she was giving a message that she doesn’t understand and doesn’t really remember giving (this is not strictly true, as she does remember making the call although she doesn’t remember exactly when it happened), and is evasive when Heard asks her for more details about the call’s content.

He suspects that she is not giving him the full details, and pushes a little more. Page deflates, and admits that she was speaking in the message to Hector before trying to guide the conversation back towards what they had found out about Blake Blossum’s films. Page says that Seals can corroborate and Seals agrees that the phone call was a minimal part of their trip to the Bar. Heard quickly agrees that it seems “on the level”.

The sound of a marching band comes from outside and a large float of a businessman goes by, although the Parade is not scheduled for today.

Ryder leaves to make a call to Achilles Apollo about the teardrop coup, introducing herself as “Miss Ryder” and saying that she is in town for an “investigation”. Achilles “wouldn’t say on a phone that he owns a car” and Ryder says she must have a mix-up in her phone book and asks if they’re still going to meet up before the festival. Achilles picks up on her ruse, organising a place to meet her.

Seals suggests that they go to The Thicket to where Blake was killed to see if they can find any further clues. Heard agrees, keeping them all together so that he can keep an eye on them, calling in the car service that he knows of. While they travel, Ryder contacts a coroner to meet them at the crime scene. Unknown to her, the operator adds a second connection to the call, letting someone else listen to the call.

Meanwhile, the parade outside keeps growing, continuing over the highway (“a super brass heavy silent night [...] as a giant businessman floats through the sky”). As they get off the highway, they’re stopped by the parade once again, and the driver mutters that she thought the parade wasn’t until tomorrow. As they reach The Thicket, they look back towards the city and see multiple floating businessman floats, and they can hear the marching band playing. The ground is wet with snow, although it’s still not sticking to the ground.

Another car, a blocky black sedan, is already parked in the driveway next to the drained pond where Blake was found. Agent Sleeves stands in the empty-pond bed with found cameras set up around the pond and one in his hands. As he spots the group, he lifts the camera and takes a photo of the group. He and Heard exchange words (“no more pictures, Agent Sleeves”), before he asks which one of them is Ryder.

Ryder identifies herself, and Sleeves asks what she wants to know about Blake’s body. Ryder steps forward, asking to know “the usual”, especially relating to how the body was found. Sleeves steps around the indent of where the body was found, telling them that the cause of death was lack of oxygen by strangulation (not drowning, as the Concern initially assumed).

Seals examines the grass surrounding the pond for evidence of drag-marks. She spots a few that have been bent over, indicating a fight occurred, leading to sheaves of rolled-out turf. The turf leads to a house that has been mostly finished, the only one on the block that is near completion. She realises that Blake was dragged over to the cars in the driveway of the house, then was disposed of in the pond before two cars left the scene. She compares the tire tracks between those at the house and ones they have in their case file, and they match the teardrop coup.

Page approaches Sleeves, and tells him that they will be taking all the photos that he has taken of the crime scene, producing documents that back her up (“a receipt-quality pieces of paper with a stamp on it on glossy paper”). Sleeves agrees although he says that “[she] might not like what [she] sees”, and tells her to follow him to the portable darkroom he has in the trunk of his car.

Ryder follows, smoking a cigarette, watching as Sleeves begins to work developing the photographs in the truck of the car. Sleeves takes a cigarette from Ryder, indicating that he has some photos at the front of the car. Ryder walks to the front of the car to collect the manila folder filled with folder. The folder contains many photos, jumbled together.

Page asks what Sleeves’ read on the case is, and he replies that he believes Blake was strangled because of his artistic work (“which, fair”). Page asks if this means he agrees with the killer, and Sleeves says that it’s not that, it’s just how things happen sometimes (“as fair as anything else”). He asks what her read on the case is, and Page gives a non-answer about the team continuing the investigation. She asks if he liked any of Blake’s films, and Sleeves replies that he doesn’t like any films. She asks where he’s from, and Sleeves asks the same of her, clearly growing suspicious.

"And in one of the photos you see him, Blake Blossom. He's crawling towards the car and in the dark behind him.. something else" by @SeamonsterArt on twitter [2]

Meanwhile, Ryder flips through the photos, which are a jumble of surveillance photos of Blake Blossum in no discernible order showing that Sleeves has been following Blake for quite some time. She sees a photo that shows The Curator (“a collection of hands, almost like a rat king, except that it’s just a weird big oblong”), reaching for Blake Blossum in the dark, and realises that this is Blake’s real cause of death. She also sees that the finished photo prints that are coming out into the back seat, one of which shows their team with horseshoe crab faces, which should not be possible with their disguises.

Sleeves says he thinks the photos might be done, and reaches further into the trunk (which is not where the photos are printing out into) to get a weapon. Page strikes him hard on the back of the head in an attempt to incapacitate him. Sleeves crumples to his knees and Page takes his gun, ejecting the cartridge. As he falls, his disguise disappears and they see that he has a horseshoe crab face.

Page gets Ryder’s attention. Heard and Seals gather by the car, and the team discuss what they should do. Ryder wants to leave him in the car, Page wants to use Sleeves as leverage, and Heard believes that the simplest thing is just to kill him. Ryder shows them the photo of Blake and The Curator. Seals takes Ryder’s cigarette and smokes it while she begins to tie Sleeves up.

Page says that she won’t kill Sleeves. Seals agrees with Heard. Heard shoots Sleeves, killing him. As he does so, the car phone inside Sleeves’s car begins to ring (“sounds like that’s for you Agent Heard”). Ryder, who’s closer, answers it. It is Agent Ward, who asks to speak to Agent Heard.

Ryder hands the phone to Heard. Ward asks for a status report and Heard tells her that the situation is under control (“there was a hostile agent here, and now there isn’t”). She asks Heard if any of the other members of his team have made move towards contacting Hector Hu, and Heard says he’s not sure (“they’re cagey”) and Ward tells him that if he sees Hector he should “move with similar confidence” as he did with Sleeves, implying that doing so will get him promoted within the Concern (“I heard that before”).