974/Paranoid Blues

Paranoid Blues
Date of Scene:	16 June 2017
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	Jessica Jones does a little more digging into the matter of the Diamond Grove apartments. But is someone already onto her and her investigation?
Cast of Characters:	Jessica Jones, Kingpin

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Jessica Jones has posed:
Jessica Jones has been juggling a paid case lately, but she hasn't forgotten about the strange unpaid case that has caught her attention too. In reality, it's in her nature to stay busy, as addicted to doing useful things as she is to alcohol or other vices. And while her last attempt led to a dead end, she nevertheless is fairly resourceful. Brooklyn is too big a place to randomly find the man she followed the other night, but there are other avenues.

Thus, she sits on the roof of the building overlooking the Diamond Grove Apartments once more, but she's not idle. She put in two phone calls. The first was routine enough: she called the County Tax Assessor's office and got herself the name of the owner of the building.

Now, she sits with the phone to her ear, dialing that owner. She has some questions for him.

Kingpin has posed:
The voice that greets Jessica's ear on the third ring is deep, rich, and matronly. You can almost picture the stereotypical middle-aged Southern black mother of four who almost certainly isn't actually the person on the end of the phone. "You've reached the office of Johnathan E. Muncely," comes the that answer. "Mr. Muncely is not available at the moment, but my name is Elise. How may I help you this afternoon?"

Bright, confident, and strong. This is a person who will be difficult to bully. She does, however, seem interested in helping as far as can be told by a couple of warmly stated sentences on a professional phone line.

It's a cold, dreary New York City day and it's juist begin to rain. No one is looking up so Jessica's position is secret.

For now, at least.

Jessica Jones has posed:
"Good afternoon, Elise," Jessica Jones says, her voice turning soft, honey sweet, and professional. "My name is Alisa White, I'm a secretary over at Keenan, Braisely, and Kline. We're a property investment concern looking into some buildings out here in Hell's Kitchen. I've been asked to find out if Mr. Muncely has recieved any offers-to-purchase for the Diamond Grove Apartment building?"

One secretary to another. Here's hoping. Because what Jessica Jones needs to know right now is whom else has taken an interest in this building, why it's important. Granted, one hardly needs to purchase a building to run drugs or guns or whatever else people are getting up to out here, but her quarry was talking about tearing the building down. And to do that, one would have to own the building. And if Muncely wanted to tear it down, all he'd have to do was get it condemned or issue an eviction order, and then do it. He wouldn't have to send a guy with a camera to get the job done.

She does keep one eye on the area, mindful of her surroundings as only a PI can be.

Kingpin has posed:
The response is probably unsurprising. First the woman inquires about Jessica's employers and references, then they get to small talk. She's been bored as Mr. Muncey doesn't get many calls and so she is more than happy to talk shp with Jessica for several long minutes. As she does the woman appears to relax.

It turns out Elise has five kids and is from St. Louis. Take that, stereotypes! Eventually, through raw perseverance, Jessica is able to get the information she wanted out of Elise. Five minutes on hold.

The only offer to purchase the building recently was from Mills and Milton, a construction firm. It was utterly rebuffed. They didn't even officially accept an offer.

Around Jessica the world is quiet while people pass by on the lower level. Being on a roof is great for not being seen. Unless someone acually followed her here...

Jessica Jones has posed:
Jones is more adept at this type of small talk than anyone might imagine. It's really rare to just call someone up and get them to tell you all about everything. It sure happens sometimes, but sometimes? You gotta laugh about the five kids and tell stories about your non-existent nephew.

Jessica glances behind her, just to check.

Her gut is telling her something's not right, so she walks to the edge of the building, aiming to jump one building over. As she does, though, she looks up Mills and Milton on her phone, just trying to get the broad overview of the company. She doesn't feel urgent, just uneasy about her position all of a sudden. The truth is she gets paranoid urges 10 times a day, and while she honors them, she nevertheless isn't too keen on drawing attention up here by racing around either. Still, it will take her half a second to get to the west side of the building so she can make a jump to something on this side of the street.

Kingpin has posed:
There's another apartment complex across the street that seems like it would be a suitable place to leap toward. The rain is picking up now, splattering on the screen of Jessica's phone and making it difficult to make out what is written there. It looks like, on a quick search, Mills and Milton is just a fairly typical construction firm that won a number of contracts from various city organizations to rebuild parts of Harlem, Hell's Kitchen, and other less affluent neighborhoods in Manhattan.

There's not a lot on the company. They were probably restructured from an older busienss because they don't appear on any older projects that immediately come to mind. Could just be the current owners like publicity more than the old ones.

Jumping across to the next building is easy and for a moment the raw paranoia would ease. But Jessica is still exposed so if someone is watching her they still are. The world as a whole is still paying no heed to what occurs above.

But there are people who know what Jessica is capable of, to some degree or another. And that feeling of being watched could just mean that she has a more persistent opponent.

It might just be the rain.

Jessica Jones has posed:
Jessica puts her phone away before she fries it. She'll pull up the name of their Registered Agent and any other addresses they may have from her computer at home.

In the meantime...

She frowns. The real way she's going to learn anything is going to be to visit Mills and Milton. And since she's //still// getting 'The Creep'...

"Well. If you're watching me or following me, asshat..."

She starts to run. "Watch and follow //this//, if you can."

She is going to take the roof road over there, and she's going to do it at the best limits of her speed, leaping, occasionally leap-gliding, and doing her guided falling, grasshopper jumping thing the entire way. Of course, if someone heard her conversation they already know where she's going, but maybe, just maybe, she'll lose them. And if someone knows //who// she is, they might well just show up at her //place// if they aren't loving what she's doing. A reminder to go spend a little time surveilling her own apartment, she supposes, when she gets home.

"Yep, love my job," she comments to herself testily. Well, point of fact she //does// love her job, but she can't help griping about it.

Kingpin has posed:
It doesn't take too long to reach the Manhattan offices of Milton and Mills by leaping from building to building. Jessica never actually sees anythign to confirm that she lost the invisible presence following her that she never actually confirmed was there. The rain has really gotten going now, a dull roar that outlines everything as drops bounce from objects and thunder off of people. Most of them have a heavy coat or an umbrella, but some are caught unawares.
    There is a large black sedan parked outside of the office building where Milton and Mills keeps their consulting hours and it pulls away as Jessicais approaching. It could easily be nothing but it's impossible to be sure. that woman with the umbrella on Jessica's left? Might be an assassin. The world is full of unknowns and right here, right now they are piling up.
    These people know Jessica's face. They probably know her name. It's impossible to know what they want, of course, but...
    As the young woman approaches the office building, preparing to head ot the fourth floor, a tall, black man in a business suit with a shaved head and a bright smile walks by and silently offers her his umbrella.
    Not everything can be shitty all at once.

Jessica Jones has posed:
She ought to have confirmed she was being followed. But Jessica Jones is rarely as eager for confrontation as people think. Hers is a job of information, asking questions, listening to answers.

"Thanks," she says, stepping under the umbrella with the dude. She's more than happy to get a dry walk to the building, a little chance to get the rain out of her face before she gets to the right floor.

Really, she hopes New York gets on with forgetting who the fuck Jessica Jones is. This job was way easier when she was a bit anonymous. Granted.

She also got hired way less often, and had a less healthy bank account. All of life is balance.

"I hope I'm not putting you out. Were you headed this way already?"

Kingpin has posed:
"Oh, no. It's not a problem. I just got off of work actually. I got intot he office early this morning." The man shrugs his broad shoulders, still smiling, and looks over otward hte office building.

"You seem to be in a hurry. Missed a meeting? Or did your umbrella blow away earlier? That seems to happen to me more often than I'd like to admit." The man has no trouble walking with Jessica up to the building in front of them. He sets a decnt pace but it still gives a bit of time to talk.

"My car is less than a block away, so you can have the umbrella." The guy folds it up and offers it to Jessica, his exprression one of faint amusement. He briefly reaches into his pocket iwth his right hand, then pulls it back out and settles on clasping the umbrella in both hands so that it points forward.

Jessica Jones has posed:
"Thanks!" Jessica says, reaching for the umbrella with an expression of total surprise.

This will be the first umbrella she's owned in her adult life. She just tends to forget about small details like these. She can remember nuances and details of cases with ease, but remembering to buy things that people need, like umbrellas, is pretty much just something she always thinks about when she's already wet.

To the question of being in a hurry, she simply gives him her best smile. "Always in a hurry, like everyone else in this town."

Granted, she really needs to forge a plan before she gets too crazy.

Thinking of all this, she does miss the man's dip into his own pocket.

Kingpin has posed:
"Then I'll let you go," the warmly smiling man replies with a soft laugh. Then he steps away and into the rain, moving toward a BMW parked not far away. What a nice guy.

The office building is fairly standard; industrial carpeting on the nicer end, whitewashed walls, no one at the desk at the front. A sign points out which elevators head to which 'tower'. The four floor is easy enough to reach.

There is no sign of anyoen else in the hallways. Most of the offices are empty even though it's the middle of the day. It's an industrial park, these things happen.

Jessica Jones has posed:
Jessica Jones frowns. Why was he nice?

She steps into the elevator and hits the button for the fourth floor, letting it carry her up and up. She opens the umbrella inside the elevator. Yeah, yeah, bad luck, but...

Is it a //bugged// umbrella? Because if it's a bugged umbrella she's going to give the dude the finger, crush the bug, and keep his umbrella. She searches up and down the handle of the thing, running her fingers along the spines, shaking her head at her own paranoia even as she exercises it. Why can't she just trust that anyone can just do a nice thing for her just because it's nice?

"Because people suck, that's why," she mutters, even as she continues.

Kingpin has posed:
No bugs. Assuming the umbrella isn't a bomb or housing other things intenrally it appears Jessica owes an apology to the one person in all of New York City who doesn't suck a big fat one.

The fourth floor turns out to be just as empty as the first, opening on a simple lobby. Jessica is duly punished for defiance of superstition and the elevator door gets caught on the umbrella and starts to beep insistently. It'll take a second to extricate it.

The woman at the desk behind the nearby window to the Mills and Milton Construction Agency is peering past her thick glasses at Jessica.

Jessica Jones has posed:
Shit. So much for just turning into the bathroom, waiting till after hours, and breaking in. She doesn't exactly look businesslike either. Jessica gives her a sheepish smile. Umbrellas, right? Elevators, right? It's an affected smile, even as she extricates the umbrella and snaps it shut. Well, it gives her time to think of a suitable pretext, anyway. And //then// maybe she can go to the bathroom and wait them all out.

The pretext turns out to be pretty straightforward. She just needs to remove some suspicion.

So she goes in and withdraws a slightly soggy business card. "Hi!" she tells the woman. "I'm Jessica Jones, private detective. I am just in the area visiting with various companies who might need my services now or in the future. I handle workman's comp fraud, corporate espionage, and other cases which might be relevant to Mills and Milton. I don't expect you to purchase anything today. I just want to leave my card."

Yes, even Jessica has to resort to the sales thing to keep food on the table, and so this isn't exactly even foreign territory to her. And if she fucking HATES it and hasn't had to do it in awhile, it nevertheless keeps a woman in wet jeans and a t-shirt from having to make up a persona that would involve a suit, and a different hair style, and a different name, and a different identity. And maybe, at this rate, a god damn wig and some sort of funky make-up job, because seriously, she's too exposed.

Kingpin has posed:
The woman behind the desk gives Jessica a perplexed look and a polite smile. She is a small person in her late fifties or early sixties, probably Latino. That is reinforced when she speaks in what is admittedly a rather thick accent. Not Mexican. Where? Hard to really place it as far as it goes.

"Ms... Jones? Ah. The hero detective! I see." The woman squints and pusehs up her coke bottle glasses. "I will make sure M. Mills sees as soon as he is back in the office. We will have a lot of things to ask you if I know as much about it as I think." The woman's accent may be thick but her english is perfect.

"Is there anything else I can do for you, Ms. Jones?" The woman reaches out to take the card. A good look at the desk shows that amid the papers her name placque reads, "Gloria".

Jessica Jones has posed:
"No thanks, Gloria," Jessica says. Ugh. That's the downside. She'll be even more on their radar. But. It is what it is. Of course, if she breaks the damned door that will also be on their radar. She'll have to find a much smoother point of entry if she wants to look around in here after hours.

After a moment she has it though. Cleaning crew. Every office has one. And all of them are //broke as fuck//. She just needs to be close enough to take advantage of that.

"See you!"

She darts back into the hallway and finds herself a bathroom stall. It's kind of annoying, locking one up and wedging herself in so her feet and head don't show, using her strength mostly to brace herself. The shitter is not her favorite place to hang out. She silences her phone though, and lays her umbrella across the back of the commode. She at least has her phone to play on, so she spends some time doing a more intensive search. She's looking on Lexus Nexus now, for court cases these guys might have been involved in. She'll watch the clock. In a professional office like this she doesn't expect anyone to stick around much later than 6; the cleaning crews will probably show up a bit after that, and she's prepared to sit and listen until she hears the rattle of a cart in the hallway.

Kingpin has posed:
Well. It takes a couple hours. Seven or so people come in and out of the bathroom before Jessica finally hears a telltale squaking cart outside of the room. In that time there's a chance to find out that there are no lawsuits posed against Mills and Milton. They are a brand new company that seems to belong to the Fisk Industries umbrella, and that entire arrangement of companies seems to be utterly unimpeachable. They operate with integrity and seem to be really dedicated improving and renovating the city of New York.

Really, people seem to love the work Mills and Milton do. It isn't until Jessica digs in closely that hse finds that a lto of the reviews were posted from the same three email accounts.

Milton actually used one of his own email accounts to post a review. No shame at all.

The cleaning cart, meanwhile, squeaks as it passes and slowly douses everything in squeaky orange clean scents.

Jessica Jones has posed:
Fisk Industries? Hmm.

Well, in and of itself that means little to Jessica Jones. She does roll her eyes at the fake review. Classic.

The creak of the cart lets her stretch her legs a little, get out of the awful position she's placed herself in. She slips out and walks up to them. At least she's dry now. She looks at the person making everything so shiny and clean. "Hey," she says, just sort of taking in who it might be, gauging this person and what they might be like, what she might have to do to get what she wants out of him or her.

Kingpin has posed:
It's a little mousy man with wide eyes and a large nose who stares up at Jessica the second she emerges. The man blinks a few times and his cart stops wheeling. He nearly trips over it when he steps away.
    "Hello? Ah... Hello," the man starts, trying to sound confident and failing utterly. "Ahem. My name is Jacob and what is such a lovely aldy doing here after closing? Doors are locked." The man blinks at that then glances down at his belt. There are the keys, no doubt.

It's not hard to make a mark when they stare at you like that. Jacob is pretty much enamoured on sight. It probably happens a lot. Poor guy. He does his best to stand tall, which is hard when you are 5'5".

Jessica Jones has posed:
Jessica almost feels sorry for Jacob. She gives him her most brilliant smile. It's a smile that promises nothing-- she's //not// sleeping with this guy to get in, she's not drunk enough-- but flirtation never hurt anything.

"Hey, cutie. I //know// the doors are locked." She has brought her voice up to a higher, breathier pitch, too, widening her eyes. She puts her hand on her hip. "$50 in your hand if you never saw me here, $100 more if you let me borrow those keys for a minute."

It's a hell of a lot of money to throw away when she can't deduct this on a client's expenses or taxes. But...

Well. Being called the 'hero detective' was kind of a good payment. And one can't be a hero if one doesn't put a little skin in the game.

She's still working on it. That thing where she's trying to bust some ass to prove to //herself// she's what at least some of the world thinks she is.

Kingpin has posed:
"Oh, I couldn't possibly- ... One hundred? Well. Okay. One hundred." It seems that Jacob is pretty quick to fold and a calculating gleam enters his eyes as he begins to go through the money. Then he quietly hands over the keys to jessica as he says, "I left my cart for a moment to check the lou and you swiped these off my belt when I walked by. We never met. You have fifteen minutes, kay?"

So much for Jacob being as nice and drpy as he seems. Jessica gets a smile and then the cart wheels away, the whistling as loud as ever. She now has her run of the building.

What's the first move, Jones? And the second, and the third. No one seems to be here to interrupt.

Jessica Jones has posed:
She pays the man. Fifteen minutes. Okay.

She unlocks the door to Mills and Milton and slips inside. With 15 minutes she's got to be //focused//. She keeps an eye out for many security cameras, though she doesn't truly expect to find them in an office such as this one. Some on the exterior doors for sure, but not the interior ones, and not the interior offices. She goes looking for file cabinets, open if she can get them. If she can't, she'll search Gloria's desk for a file cabinet key.

First move: she goes flipping through for anything about the Diamond Grove Apartments.

Second move? Second move: she goes digging through the //trash// for anything that strikes her interest or fancy. Every trash bin she can get to, especially in the boss' office.

Third move? This is sort of an aquarium grab of information as it is, so she takes another shot in the dark. She goes around to each and every printer she can find and hits the button that will make it cough up whatever it printed last. Nobody ever remembers to clear the printer. She does the same for the copiers. Maybe all she'll find is bullshit, but maybe, just maybe, there will be a few driblets of information that will lead her to a next move.

It's not ideal, but she's adept at making the best out of bad situations.

She also keeps her eye on the clock. She wants to get Jacob his keys back in a timely fashion.

Kingpin has posed:
The whir of printers and copiers all running at once and disgorging the contents of their limited memories deafens the senses to smallsounds. The white noises obliterates anything quieter than it is, rendering the entire room nearly still despite the fact it is actually a frenzy of movement. Papers are jetted out onto plastic trays to await being collected. It is this noise that prevents Jessica immediately recognizing that the room has been entered.

Jacob stands near the door and looks around, his expression one of careful thought while he takes in his surroundings. The man furrows his brow gently and then gives a slight shrug, stepping a bit further in. "Just letting you know that your time is up in about five minutes. Need to get my work done or someone's going to go through and try to figure out what I was up to up here." The man shrugs his shoulders and then she step back to move out of the room without commenting on what was happening. Jacob whistles as he works. It's disgustingly cheerful.

The paperwork comes to a few conclusions overall. There are many useful things available amid the piles of drek. It looks like the most recent thing sent from one of the printers was actually a fax. The contents? An offer made to purchase the apartment complex Jessica just visited for literally twice the suggested marketing value. The file cabinets outline a variety of apartment complex renovation projects, all of which were in particularly poor shape when the company decided to make its acquisitions.

There's a lot more here to be read than can reasonably be gone through in fifteen minutes. It looks as if Mills has done most of the work for the company and Milton tends to be their face. In his file cabinets are business plans.They've made a lot of motions at properties surrounding the one Jessica has in mind, and each seems to be selling ne after the other in a surprisingly rapid succession.

Time's just about up. Jessica will have to decide what to do in the next few minutes.

Jessica Jones has posed:
Yeah, she's just going to take all the paper and go through it later, though it's heartening that the first glance says that her evening here has borne some fruit. And as time is just about up, she goes about collecting everything, then returns him his keys. "Fair enough," she says. "Pleasure doing business with you."

And now that umbrella? Is going to come in a lot of handy for more than just the rain.

She takes the elevator back downstairs. She opens it up just before she gets to any exterior camera that might be aimed at the entryway and exit of the entire complex, and brings it down low. Now, as far as the camera is concerned, she's just any person who might have stayed super late at work tonight. Thank you, Guy from the Sidewalk Who Did Not Actually Suck. Jacob wasn't really that bad either, all things considered, and might be worth cultivating as a long-term contact later. But no need to push her luck there.

Instead, she'll head back to Alias Investigations. She's got to surveill her own place to make sure that she isn't about to get shot. And then? Then she's got a metric fuckton of reading to do. Not a bad day for getting stuff done. Not a bad day at all.