Nothing... -LO: SVU-

"Nothing Out of Something"

by Street Howitzer

"There are no coincidences," John said.  "Just conspiracies."

Odafin did not, though he was tempted, look over at his new partner.  Two weeks into his stint at Special Vics, and they were already jammed together on a stakeout.  Stakeouts didn't bother Fin.  He'd done more than his share of them while he'd been in Narcotics, and he'd gotten used to the feeling of his ass going numb from sitting on it too long, the taste of cold coffee, and the mindless ramblings that usually passed for conversation.

The conversation he was used to rested almost entirely on sex--who was having it, who wasn't, who were they having it with, who they wanted to have it with.  He'd even come to the stakeout mentally prepared with a list of theories, most of them bogus and based on nothing, as to who in his new department was fooling around where they shouldn't have.  He even had someone picked out who he felt comfortable lying about and claiming that he was attracted to.  He hadn't been interested in sex since his ex-wife had left (with his cock stashed in her purse, he sometimes thought), but it looked good to feign interest, sometimes.  As it turned out, all of this was entirely useless; he hadn't made himself ready to sit and talk with someone whose brain was as weird as Munch's.

They'd been sitting outside the perp's house for the last five hours, waiting for the bastard to make a move.  In that time, Munch had somehow mistaken him for someone who gave a shit about his fucked-up X-files bull, and had lectured him at length about how the government covered up the worst parts of Iran-Contra.  Fin hadn't paid much attention the first time that Iran-Contra had come up in the public eye--he'd been too busy at the time with real life, something John seemed to have a slippery hold on, at best--and he certainly couldn't be moved to care about it twenty years later.  Once John realized that his new partner was no longer listening, he'd finally shut up.

Now this.  If Fin so much as turned his head John's way, he'd take that as a sign that he was listening again.  Then his mouth would start running off another 500-yard dash, and Fin would have to end his very brief time in Special Vics by shooting himself.

Well, that might get Ken to stop by, he thought, and pretended that there was no bitterness or internal frustration tainting that thought.

"The only way to function in a job like this is to assume that everything is interconnected," Munch went on, still trying to bait him.  "You must have figured that out in Narcs: users connect to dealers, connect to bigger dealers, connect to smugglers and doctors and mobsters.  Not much different on this end.  Pedo rings and porn rings don't function dissimilarly from drug rings."

Dissimilarly?  What, did he think he'd get a pat on the back for a ten-dollar word like that?

"There are always connections to be made, my friend.  Connections equal conspiracies.  The longer you pay attention, the more you realize that.  Like twenty-three."  With that, he stopped yapping, and took a swig from his coffee.

Odafin kept his eyes trained on the brownstone.  He wasn't going to bite that, no fucking way, it was a clear set-up for the next logical question ("Gee, Munch, what'cha mean by twenty-three, huh?").  Which would mean that he'd have to break his rule of not encouraging Munch to go off on whatever conspiracy theory was on his mind.

Still, though... twenty-three?  What the hell was he talking about?  He'd heard a few loony conspiracies in his time, and he knew the ones that everybody knew--Bermuda Triangle, Area 51, Men in Black, and so on.  He even remembered hearing once that the Oklahoma City bombing hadn't been perpetrated by Timothy McVeigh; the wild-eyed, rocking tweaker informed him that aliens from Neptune had actually blown it up.  The tweaker insisted that the government didn't want people to know about the Neptunians, and framed McVeigh; for their assistance in the frame-up, his cracker RAHOWA brothers got a free pass to bust up stores and mail bombs.  The only thing that Fin took away from that crazy fuck's babbling was a sense of amusement.  That cat had seen aliens behind every corner and in every shadow, but had no idea that the dealer he was confessing all this to was part of an undercover bust--a real conspiracy, there.

Twenty-three.  He'd known paranoia to revolve around secretive places, people, organizations--things that actually existed.  But a number?  Something as vague as that?

"Where'd you get this coffee from, anyhow?  Did you tell them to hold off on pouring my cup until they reached the overheated dregs at the bottom?  Because, I've got to tell you, this tastes like hot water and ash."

"I do bettah next time, den, massa," Fin grumbled, only realizing too late that his brilliant self had forgotten to keep his damn mouth shut.

"Oh, it speaks!  And I thought that the thrill of the wait was so engrossing that you were rendered mute.  Shows me what I know."  John's worn features crinkled into a small, sardonic grin.  Odafin doubted that his new partner was even aware of the expression anymore, he seemed so used to making it.  "Come on.  Nothing to do on a stakeout but talk, right?"

"No.  Nothin' to do on a stakeout but watch for the perp.  Anything else is gravy."

"Which appears to be what you got me to drink.  Come on, Tutuola.  I refuse to believe that you could really be this boring.  They don't give me boring partners.  The powers that be figured that one out years ago."

"Keep your damn conspiracies to yourself."  He pretended that he was still studying the brownstone.

"What, no curiosity?  No eagerness to learn and evolve as a human being?"

"How the hell does 'twenty-three' have anything to do with any of that?"  Not looking.  Not looking.  Not looking.

Munch cleared his throat, and despite his complaints, took another swig of coffee.  "Twenty-three chromosomes from your mother and twenty-three chromosomes from your father make a human being.  The human physical cycle runs for twenty-three days.  Earth actually rotates at a speed of about twenty-three hours a day, not twenty-four, and its axis is tilted at about twenty-three degrees."

"So what?"  Oh, damn it, he was going to get sucked into this, wasn't he?

"Glad you asked.  The Knights Templar had twenty-three grand masters.  Alexander the Great was supposedly twenty-three when he cut the Gordian knot.  Ghandi's Salt March lasted for twenty-three days.  The first Morse code message was Numbers 23:23.  Twenty-two different government organizations merged into the twenty-third organization we call the Department of Homeland Security--"

"I repeat: so--what?"  Now he was looking over at Munch, with a glare that probably could have melted the brownstone, if he'd been focusing on it.  "You're talking about a bunch of coincidences--"

"No such thing, my friend."  If John was perturbed at the glare Fin turned on him, he wasn't showing it.  "Twenty-three is considered to be a sacred number to Dischordians, or people who encourage and design chaos, because it's considered an expression of five--two and three.  It's also used by the Skull and Bones, and the Illuminati--"

"Oh, shut up."  The Illuminati, now, that was something he'd actually heard of.  "That's bullshit.  I can't believe a grown man actually believes in that childish crap."

"What--acknowledging the Illuminati makes me childish?  You don't even know--"

"I know that for a super-secret organization that's supposed to control the world, they do a bad job of staying secret.  If I've heard of 'em, they can't be that stealthy."

"It's rather tragic, meeting someone who's never known the advantages of hiding in plain sight.  Clearly, you've never read Poe."

"Not since high school."  And that was longer ago than Odafin cared to remember.  "Can we get back to what we're paid for?"

"Not until they pay me what it's worth to sit out here and die of boredom, my friend."  John peeled the plastic lid off of his cup, then peered inside the cup, as if he was trying to see whether or not it was coffee in there.  "Which one are we keeping half an eye on, again?"

Fin stared.  Munch was old (about as old as he usually felt in the mornings), but he was far from senile.  The opposite, really.  He had a brain that was clearly able to squirrel away the most trivial bullshit.  That he'd so quickly forgotten the far-more-important information of which brownstone they were watching was, well, stunning.  Maybe he was a little too focused on the whole conspiracy business--it was making his head a little soft when it came to the things that mattered.

He opened his mouth to respond, but stayed silent.  The brownstone they were watching was the one next to the end terrace; the windows they were focusing on were on the top floor, where the perp spent most of his time.  Second brownstone, third floor.  Two and three.  That son of a bitch.

"Which one?"  John was damn proud of himself, wasn't he?

"Why can't you just talk about sex, like a normal person?"  One last-ditch effort; anything to avoid having to give Munch the satisfaction of thinking he was right.

"Because, as any of my many ex-wives could assure you, I'm completely bored with that particular topic.  Now, which--"

Silently, Odafin prayed that he could finally have that heart attack that he'd been expecting for years.

-end-