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[b][u]Saxon Investigations, Santa Monica, Los Angeles[/b][/u]
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The office in which Frederick Saxon now found himself, as he did on many occasions, was a far cry from pristine. It wasn’t dirty, there was little in the way of dust and grime, it was simply well used. Photographs were pinned to the walls in collections, some as simple data, others on specific ‘cases.’ A map of the city, in great detail but with little flair, adorned one wall, pins and information placed upon it, many lines connecting to each other, weblike. The cabinets, behind and to the right of his desk that was more a large table than anything else, were for once shut, storing yet more information, currently irrelevant. Upon the table sat books, some seemingly random, others with a clear connection to the city, and a great collection of smaller maps, a number of accounts and a few more photos. Rested on top of one pile, a laptop, the clunky thing currently turned off as he scrawled in a pad, sat at his ‘desk.’

Chaos as it might have appeared, it simply reflected the shambling order of Saxon’s mind. He could find anything relating to his current focus within a second, and knew the location of anything else. Moonlight flooded the room, along with a low-glowing bulb, provided as much brightness as necessary. The window, equipped with the thickest shutters he had even seen, able to withstand a nuclear blast as Larry Smith had previously joked, often enabled him to work into the day, shrugging off the building sickness his kind felt awake at that time for a few more hours. Tonight would not end similarly, he had already tracked down his main objectives for the day, now he was simply updating, deciding what would still need further looking in to, and if there was anything new that required attention. Since the days of conflict, his work had never slowed down, in the uneasy peace, there was far more interest in the plans of your neighbour, than when he openly came to your door with a loaded shotgun. His body may not have needed it in much the same way as in life, but even still, he enjoyed falling back into his chair, relaxing as he looked up at the ceiling, pins and glue marks pointing out where once that surface too had been covered. Those had all been filed of late, had been a futile effort in tracking down an elusive creature that had proven herself the better.

There was a problem with your life when you knew so many G4 pilots on first name basis. A problem when you were never quite sure upon wakening just where, exactly, you were--and only because you never stopped moving. Every twilight, the vampiric morning, began the same for Eva: sunglasses, a balcony, and a long cigarette. 

When chocolate and tobacco were birthrights not of globalization but ancient roots, it was truly the simple pleasures in life that brought Eva back into the gravity of reality. Much like a mortal wasn’t truly awake until that first cup of coffee, for Eva it was the cool air on her skin and the sting of gray smoke. 

As Friday afternoon sank past the horizon and began the transformation into Friday night, Los Angeles was just starting to come to life. It was as if the city itself was a vampire at heart: all glamor, night life, and viciousness. As soon as those massive lights came alive and light up the white block lettering proclaiming the city’s true God in the hills overhead:

Hollywood. 

On the way to Santa Monica, the only cars on the road were Bentley's, Lexus', Aston Martins, Porsche, Audi, Benz, BMW, Cadillac, the very lavish automobiles parading under the idol of Hollywood, holy pilgrims to the religion of Materialism. Photoshoot fresh, a land of golden hills and endless sunshine where couture was a genuine path to Enlightenment. A land of dinner parties, wine tastings, and yoga Sundays. It got a little better for Eva the closer she got to Santa Montica down the 2, the freeway that ran into the city from Santa Monica Boulevard like a river snaking from it's mouth. 

On a Friday night, the moment her Land Rover parked and she slipped from the vehicle's passenger side, her lips spread into a wide smile. There was cotton candy and joy in the sweet SoCal evening air coming from the carnival rides and games on the Santa Monica pier. Across the street were the old beach side bars, popular with the older and white crowds of the area, more apt to sport crimson Angels banners than Dodgers blue. All she could taste from the direction was salt and Corona, a fact that laughter her snickering as Samantha locked the vehicle and walked up behind her. 

"The office is down the street, to the right. It's the Columbia building, according to Google Earth."

Eva didn't need Google Earth to know where the office was, but Eva corrected Samantha with that fact. In most Kindred-Ghoul relationships it was the Kindred that made the decisions. In Eva's, Samantha was essentially her 'handler.' if Eva needed it or wanted it, Samantha handled it. If Eva needed to go somewhere or coordinate some event, Samantha handled it. A job that could entail everything from browbeating a famous Director into regaining his artistic focus to running down the streets for a mocha latte. 

But this one...this one had to be Eva's, and Eva's alone. It was a decision Samantha didn't like, the lengthy blonde's body language alone making that painfully clear. At least until one of the cell phones in her Gucci clutch began to buzz, demanding her attention. By the time Samantha answered it, Eva was gone; already down the street and into the historic office building that still rented out space, mostly to law offices and small but wealthy talent agencies. [i]Saxon Investigations[/i] said the small black lettering on the hazed glass of the otherwise single entrance to the PI's office. 

As good as his senses had gotten since she'd originally found him, entering the office in such complete silence that there was no hope to detecting her was childe's play. She left the announcement of her arrival to the metal on metal strike of a Zippo lighter opening and striking flame that was quickly followed with a cloud of pale gray cigarette smoke, the woman in pale black jeans that rested well worn on her hips and a thin gray metallic button up silk blouse with a deeply plunged V-neck. Her hair was straight as it'd ever been, carefully combed and pulled into a pony tail set with pins too close to the color of her hair to be easily seen without a much closer inspection. 

There was no trick of Presence, no unholy glory in which to behold. Just a native girl and the ghost of red painted lips on the butt of the cigarette held between her thumb and index finger as her big, dark eyes, smiled at him and his reaction to her sudden appearance. The smile her lips gave was much more demure, like a shy girl admitting some secret. 

"I feel like I'm back in the 30s, Private Dicks and all."

“Maybe you got lost, maybe you’re back her, finding me all over again.” He didn’t look up immediately as he replied to her in a voice slightly huskier than his usual tone. He knew to look up was to be lost and the ‘detective,’ almost as much a relic from another time as the office itself, white shirt, two buttons undone and a pair of thin black suspenders, treasured the brief moment before his eyes inevitably left the contents of his desk to lock with those which studied him. That wasn’t quite true, on the way up they more than slowed over her body. Saxon didn’t think it was just for him, a deliberate ploy to ensnare only him, but it worked none the less, and he was sure it was no accident.

In those moments, before they really began talking, it was hard for him. Standing there was the woman he’d spent more than half a century trying to find after the horror of a war that had touched even his undead soul. She had breezed back into his life, as if none of his work had even mattered. At times he’d wanted to be angry, to rage against the absolute dismissal of time by the Toreador elder, but how could she be any other way? He may have been ageless, but she’d been around so long as to be timeless. He’d lived longer than any kine of his generation, but he was still a child next to her. It would be a long, long time before that even had a chance of changing.

“It’s not often I have attractive female company here...I apologise for the mess, I’d promise that next time I’ll have it in better shape, but I wouldn’t lie to you.” He continued with a slight smirk, it didn’t show, but there was a slight amount of discomfort for him, to have her there, where all the countless pieces of evidence to her potential locations had once been hung. “Business or pleasure?”

"Business [i]is[/i] pleasure." Normally, it was true. When your art was your life, business and pleasure tended to mix in beautiful, if chaotic, ways. But the truth of the moment left her more serious and grim than she might have otherwise ever appeared before him. There was something on her mind--and you didn't have to be a Detective to figure it out. 

Just helped if you were. 

There was a nervous flick of her cigarette, preceded by an even more nervous stare; her eyes taking in every little inch of his appearance, and more. He was Kindred, he had some idea of what she was capable of if she had the same Disciplines most Toreador had. She'd pluck the thoughts from his very mind, if she thought it would have helped her. Luckily for him, she knew it wouldn't. She didn't come here for that.

She came to talk. 

"I know you don't know much about me, Frederick. What I am, what I do, what my role is in this very strange town. But you've lived in the Night long enough, I think, to have a pretty good idea of those things." Then she trailed, escaping to the cigarette, escaping to the thoughts in her mind. And how very uncomfortable they made her. 

"Things aren't right in LA. That's no surprise to you, I'm sure, but...maybe it WOULD be news to you to learn things weren't right in LA...not on any level."

There was a weight to the way she said it, and to the look her eyes gave him before they trailed away from him again, and back into her own thoughts before another nervous flick of the cigarette. The veiled message was, at most, thinly veiled. If he were to assume she were part of some unknown power structure, maybe the kind of structure in which the entire city rested, and then were to be told things 'were not well' on any level?

She couldn't have been more obvious if she used neon lights and firecrackers, it seemed to her. And Eva always distasted being overly obvious about anything. "I need your help. I require the kind of discretion that makes the NSA look like gossiping girls. If that's no problem for you..." Then she moved, far too quickly for him to actually see, just a blur of motion between when she stood near the entrance and when she was standing next to his desk, borrowing a pen and scribbling something onto the nearest clear piece of paper she could find--a manilla envelope, in this case. There in big, looping, cursive letters was an address: [i]415 Sunset Boulevard, Lot B.[/i]

Then she tossed the pen back to the desk, and smiled at him once more. "I'll meet you there in sixty minutes. If it's a problem, don't come. If you show up in sixty-one minutes...well, I'm sure we'll run into each other again in another decade or two, right?" There was a teasing edge to her smile, even as she killed the cigarette with a pinch of her fingers and tossed the butt into the nearest bin. 

"Thanks, Freddy."

He knew worryingly little about her, maybe slightly more than she thought but still, far less than any other kindred he had encountered within LA. What he did know however, was enough so that when she told him that things were awry in LA, he believed her. As much as he liked to think there was some amount of bond between them, he also doubted she would have told him such if things weren’t heading towards dire straits, if they weren’t there already. He almost physically cringed at her tease, but instead it formed a grin across his features. Did he have a problem with just being called on at less than a moments notice? Maybe, but not enough to let him turn this up. She was gone herself before he could reply, before registering what she had called him. [i]No one calls me that.[/i]

None of the members of his small band, or ‘coterie’ were present, so any preparations he made were alone. A quick check of the location online, planning routes for a variety of situations. A Revolver holstered, hidden in its sling beneath the blazer going on over his shirt. A more modern 
take on the jackets he would have worn in his police days. He locked up, a fairly simple affair, given how much information could be found within the walls of the establishment. A single lock. 

And a host of tripwires.

This, however, left him with plenty of time. A dangerous situation to be in. Try and attempt something else and he might overshoot the time, arrive early, and that might be as much of a call off as turning up late. Instead, he found himself waiting on a bench, beneath a street light with the sea air pressing at him. The eyes of the Kine could often not pick out the stars in a city at night, but it took only a few moments for his vision to pierce the haze and light pollution as he watched the celestial bodies above. It was serene, for a few moments, before his momentary enforced respite was punctured by the noise and bustle of the city around him, possibly even more so than during the waking hours of the Kine.

The meeting lot was hardly noteworthy, but then, couldn’t that be said of any such places? He arrived at the turn of the minute, having gone on a deliberately winding route, rather than have to hang around oddly on any of the roads. The Kine presence was minimal approaching the lot, unlike much of the surrounding area, which seemed more than a coincidence. He found a wall to lean against, turning his eyes, again and again, over the lot, picking up everything but lingering on nothing.