(1939-03-27) Vengeance Is Mine
Details for Vengeance Is Mine
Summary: After rescuing Hector and the money from a transaction gone awry, Beryl witnesses her employer's growing ire directed at Shelley Prewett.
Date: 1939/03/27
Location: Carrow Investment Services LTD
Related: Immediately follows : Back Alley Transactions and precedes: Suspension of Reason Or Firewhiskey.
Characters
BerylHector

There are many things in this life that Beryl Crabbe finds particularly thrilling; but possibly none can garner the satisfaction of fleeing the scene of a crime and getting away by the skin of one's proverbial teeth. The only thing that can improve the situation is to get away with one's skin as well as the goods. And so, if one were to gaze into the office of Hector Carrow, one would find themselves faced with a particularly smug looking Beryl, perched atop the boss's desk. Her hair is a little mussed - but when are those auburn curls ever tamed? Other than that, she hasn't a thing amiss after the sudden apparition out of Diagon Alley she was forced to make - with her employer in tow.
Her stomach is a little shaky from the ride, but she's settling that matter now by fixing a Kretek into her slender cigarette holder. She might as well light up and wait for Hector to awaken.

The unfortunate man is lying on the floor, of course. Beryl couldn't be expected to do much more with him, given his size… and the utter lack of comfortable furniture within the room.

— Long minutes pass and Beryl is more than half way done with her first cigarette before the sudden movement of Hector sitting bolt upright breaks the stillness int he room. His eyes are wide and confuses for only a moment, soft bronze eyes though as the polyjuice potion has not worn off and left him looking like himself again.
Turning his head toward the woman sitting atop his desk with a smug look on her face Hector asks, "What happened?" There is a nice stinging pain that rings through his shoulder now from hitting the wall as well as the general 'all over' pain that follows being stunned. The memory of someone yelling out before everything going black returns to his mind before he adds, "Who was that?" With a much darker and more ominous tone this time around.

A thin trail of milky white smoke drifts from ruby lips. "Welcome back to the land of the living," Beryl remarks dryly.
With a graceful movement of her hand, she taps the holder with her slim finger, flicking ash into the tray on Hector's desk before replying: "You were at the tail end of the transaction when a meddlesome twenty-twenty vigilante apparently got wise to the situation."
The holder returns to her lips, and Beryl draws a little more of the spiced smoke. Releasing it quickly, she then continues - cold and smooth as ice: "Shelley Prewett - if memory serves me correctly. I saw her in silhouette, but the light showed her hair colour plainly. And besides, I've spent enough time in close quarters with her to recognize her voice and general size and shape." Now, another pause comes as the woman smirks to herself: "Caught you dead to rights with an old fashioned Stupefy, boss."

Now, she falls enigmatically silent, waiting for a reaction from Hector. She says nothing about how they escaped, their customer, the item or more importantly… the payment.

— There is a long pause and Hector puts the name to a face and sneers slightly at the recollection. "She always has been a shoot first type of Auror." However before he elaborates the man stands up slowly and dusts himself off before rolling his shoulder and wincing in pain a bit. "Do you have the payment?" The egg means nothing to Hector so long as they get paid. "I will assume that you got me out then? It would seem that you have gotten much better since your last adventure." Moving toward his desk now Hector finds his silver cigarette case and plucks one out, lighting it quickly and taking a steadying drag of acrid smoke.

Beryl smiles languidly. Seeing as how she DID pretty much save the day for everyone involved, (and therefore saved The Collector's business) her pride can be forgiven… somewhat.
Snubbing out her own cigarette in the ash tray, she responds with a lackadaisical little shrug of her slim shoulders: "Naturally." She's Beryl Crabbe - she's not known for standing and fighting. She's known for getting in through the keyhole and leaving with the gold before anyone's the wiser.

Tugging the collar of her sweater nonchalantly, she stretches it enough to reach her other hand in. Withdrawing it again, she fishes the envelope in question from where it has been tucked into her brazier. Smirking glibly, she quirks and eyebrow and offers it to the boss, still warm. "From my heart to yours," she sarcastically jokes.

— There is no pause as Hector takes the envelop and opens it while the cigarette hangs from his lips. The money is all here and it's even more than they would normally have brought in due to the idiotic buyer. "You, as opposed to your ridiculous counterpart, continue to prove your worth Ms Crabbe." Hector reaches into the package and pulls out more than double what he would have normally paid her for it. "As such, you will be getting his cut as well."
With that bit of work done Hector pockets the money and takes another drag as he looks off into the distance out a window. His eyes narrowing in a vicious sort of way as plans being to form in his mind. "This cannot be allowed to stand. The Collector has a reputation to uphold… and I am beginning to regret not killing that woman when I had the chance." Hector looks down at Beryl once again and stares hard at her, thought it's not her that he is beginning to boil over. "Do you know much about Ms Prewett's previous partner?"

The sweet satisfaction of cold, hard cash being slipped into Beryl's hand… there's nothing like it.
Smiling, still very much self-satisfied about the whole situation, she folds her cut (and Tibs') in half, and waves it softly beneath her nose. Sniffing the faint smell of the paper is more pleasant than the awful smoke Hector chooses to emit from those dreadful cigarettes of his.
Cool green matches Hector's gaze as he fixes upon her, and Beryl studies his features for a moment before replying. There was that small instant of doubt when she wasn't entirely sure whether or not his growing ire was directed at /her/. "I have to admit that I know nothing about Prewett, beyond the fact that certain members of law enforcement believe she has no business in the Auror office. Something about her being a mental cripple?" She shakes her head a little, looking at the man questioningly.

— There is a long smile that creeps across Hectors face as the news is relayed to him. He does not say that it was he who had done the crippling in the first place, but instead he only stares down at the woman. "How interesting." The words dripping with malicious intent as he finally looks away.
"That will be the last time we transact with an idiot in an alleyway. Were it not for the payment I would never have considered it and this is exactly why. However, I am not worried so much about the idea of this woman capturing our customer… it makes what I have in mind all that much more easily laid out." Hector chuckles mildly as he takes another drag. "She will regret being so brash and stunning without warning like some drunk in a barfight."

Beryl sits on Hector's desk, half turned to face him, and quite as still as a marble statue. Again, the woman furrows her perfect brow as she attempts to read whatever might be passing through his mind. That smile is slightly worrisome… but then, a lot of things about Hector Carrow are worrisome.
"Well," she says lightly, trying to cover the underlying uncertainty in her silvery voice, "Just say the word and I do whatever you require, boss. I can't pretend to know what you have in mind. And, you know me," another small shrug is given, "As long as there's money to be had at the end of the rainbow, it's not hard to entice me along."
That said, she playfully waves her delightfully large bankroll and slips it into her purse, along with the slender cigarette holder. She saved that golden goose for a reason.

— "I am confident that if I should need your help that I will have it. However, it is for the best that you do not know what I have planned for now. If you saw this woman then there is a chance that she also saw you, in which case you need to lay low for a while and avoid the auror." Hector butts out his cigarette and smiles at the woman in a than way, his soft bronze eyes peering at her as he does so. "There is no money in this… not for now at least. This is about a reckoning. We cannot allow this to happen without retaliation if we want our reputation to remain strong."

"If she's the mental cripple they claim her to be, I doubt her reputation or word is worth very much, even if she did." Beryl replies, just a touch petulantly. However, the man knows by now that she does whatever he orders - and conveniently without much question. She's not a yes-man. She just knows a good deal when she's got it - and she's not going to lose that for anything.
Hector's gaze is met and matched by Beryl's, and her expression is cool, cunning and calculating: "No money? That's not the way I see it. It's just a means to an end," she says lightly, her lips drawing into a faint, devilish smile. "If an obstacle stands between you and your goals, you get three choices. Climb over it, go around it, or else remove it entirely. And that all affects the flow of steady cash in this uncertain time we live in."

— Hector simply nods his head, not elaborating on her comments, but instead chosing to move toward his jacket and begin putting it on. "I suggest you get to your flat and don't answer the door for a while. Don't get seen on the street tonight anymore than you must." The man rolls his shoulder once again in an effort to gauge the damage that has been done. "I need to clean up. Then… we start again tomorrow." Without another word Carrow apparates away with a sudden crack of air and magic. Tonight was not a failure but it was not success in Hectors mind until he had destroyed the auror who stunned him in that alley.

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