Howdy there again, folks. In a much more timely fashion than has been the case as of late, we've got some more Geistly goodness for you. Well, I mean, I do. I dunno where I got this 'we' stuff from. Anyhow...
So we pick up in the middle of the drive to Max's place, where Richard is planning to pretend to be a more traditional medium saying that Lillian is with him, and basically try to get Max to confess to whatever it was that he did. He's going to use Marionette to make it look like Lillian is haunting him. Eddy asks Richard if he's asked Lillian (aka Lady Luck, Richard's geist, in case you need the reminder) if she wants this. Richard's pretty sure she wants to know what happened, at least. Besides, he's not planning on hurting Max, just scaring him a bit. Eddy strongly suggests that they start small, then, and let it build, and Richard states that that was his intent even if it didn't quite sound like it (which, to be fair, it didn't). But given that Max was doing some sort of business with Rossi, Richard's not particularly inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.
So they get to the house (a small house, nothing fancy, car in the driveway) and Eddy opts to stay in the car and manage the Boneyard from the outside. His plan is to more or less bring it in at the lowest 'setting' he needs to to just hit Max with the Guilty condition and ramp up effects as need be, but he doesn't plan to go whole hog like he did with Johnny Wallis (which is probably for the best, given how that shook out). But he does pump enough plasm into it to establish a New Law: "Thou shalt not lie." He can see Max sitting in his armchair, staring at the TV, drinking. It's currently about 5pm, so it's a little early for him to be tying one on.
Richard knocks on the door and after a moment Max, smelling slightly of booze, answers. Richard introduces himself and says he's here on Lillian's behalf. Max's eyes narrow and he tells him to tread very carefully. Richard asks Max if he knows what a spirit medium is, and Max asks "What the fuck is a spirit medium?"
Richard jumps right into talking about how he knows what happened to Lillian and asks how many people knew she was allergic to bee stings. Max, getting angrier, demands to know what Richard is selling and what this is all about. Richard explains that Lillian's ghost is with him right--
Max slams the door in his face, mid-sentence.
Richard shouts through the door that Lillian is very angry with him. He gestures and Eddy uses Boneyard to slam the door open hard enough to embed the doorknob in the wall. Max is already on the phone to the police, reporting the encounter he's just had. Eddy hasn't been able to see the recorded memory of what happened to Lillian so he doesn't know quite what she looks like or what she sounds like so he just adds some voices and static to the phone line and makes Max see things out of the corner of his eye.
Richard uses Marionette to yank the phone out of his hand as he walks into the room, immediately asking Max if he thinks it's weird that a bee would be in Lillian's coat pocket. Max doesn't answer him but instead goes into his bedroom and rummages through a drawer for his gun. Richard tells Max that he saw her fall, he saw that Max knew something was going to happen, that he saw him crying. Meanwhile, Eddy's cranking up the haunting effects through Richard's already made this dramatic enough on his own that Max finds the gun and points it right at him.
Richard uses the Dirge to force him to calm down, which he does, dropping the gun. Max just sits on the end of his bed, looks up at Richard with tears in his eyes, and just quietly asks him "Why are you doing this?"
Richard says he wants Lillian to find peace, and that he knows Max was dealing with Rossi when he ran Bacchus, and he knows that Rossi doesn't do everything by the book. Max snorts and says he knows that Rossi's a mobster, and a lot of mobsters were sinking money into casinos then. They probably built, directly or otherwise, a third of the casinos on the Strip, at least.
Richard then address the fact that Max knew something was going to happen. Max admits that of all the things he thought could happen, he wasn't expecting Lillian to go like that. Richard asks how he thought she'd go, and Max says he doesn't know what he expected, which New Law registers as a lie and they all know it.
Richard says that Lillian doesn't like it when he lies, and Max unloads on him at this point. He yells at him, telling him not to pretend that she's there with them. He helped build a casino and has dealt with a lot of grifters and con men, so he demands that Richard stop pretending that she's there.
Richard uses Marionette to fling a picture of Lillian off the nightstand so it hits the wall. Max just snarls at him and demands to know what he wants. Richard says he wants to know the truth, what Max thought was going to happen. After a moment, Max admits that he thought she was going to be murdered. He made some mistakes, some costly ones, and he was deep enough in debt that his own life was in danger, and out of desperation he put a hit out on her for the insurance money.[0]
Lady Luck is enraged, and ready to lash out, and Richard just lets her go. As she visibly manifests to a shocked Max, Richard just leaves the room so she can do whatever. There are several seconds of sobbing and inarticulate weeping, followed by a single gunshot, at which point silence falls over the house.
Richard heads back to the car and Eddy closes the door behind him, and Lady Luck/Lillian Loch rejoins him when he raches the car. Then they hear sirens coming and step on the gas and get out of there.[1]
They go back to the hotel and tell Kenneth what happened. To put it mildly, Kenneth is not pleased that Richard just killed a guy. He says they don't get to decide who lives and who dies, and Richard says that they did it with Mel. But it's rightfully pointed out that Mel was an active danger to the lives and souls of other people. Meanwhile, Kenneth is an FBI agent who now knows a murder was committed that he has to look the other way on. He says that Richard can't let 'the thing in his head' go around killing people. Richard argues that Lady Luck only wanted to kill the one guy, and only when she found out that he'd had her killed, and this shouldn't be a problem.
The group comes to a collective agreement to not just execute people any more unless they can at least stop and talk it through first. Richard goes off to have a private conversation with Lady Luck.
Everyone takes a step back to calm down for a bit, and as Eddy is back in his office at the hotel he's informed that someone is here to see him regarding a 'mutual interest in the El Cortez.' In walks a woman in a nice dress with possibly Mexican features introducing herself as Carmen Cross, the leader of another krewe of Sin-Eaters in town, colloquially referred to as the Enders, the krewe that the Crossroads Krewe is currently in debt to.[2]
Carmen says she's here to call in that marker on a job that should be mutually beneficial. In particular, she's interested in a number of rigged slot machines that Rossi has in his casino. She and her people, over time, have worked out that Rossi clearly has an influence on the patterns of luck, and they think that somehow these slot machines factor into it above and beyond the acquisition of wealth. She wants to steal one of these slot machines and crack it open to get a better idea of what's going on in there -- and if she can also bring in the guy who built the rigged machines in the first place (in other words, Richard), then so much the better.
She also wants to know more about how Rossi's abilities work. She's got all sorts of questions about them -- like, for example, are they meant for some more benign purpose and he's twisted them in a self-serving manner.
Eddy calls Richard and Kenneth into the room. He introduces her to Carmen and explains that they owed her krewe a debt for helping them when they were scouting out the casino and looking into Rossi's financials. She goes on to explain to them what she's after and why. Kenneth, already concerned at how many crimes he's being tangled up in, makes her definitively nail down what she's after and says he's not going to commit to anything unless there's a firm plan. She explains that she doesn't have one yet, that she wanted to make sure the Crossroads Krewe was involved as early as possible rather than build a plan and then try to slot them into it and expect it to work.
Eddy steps up at this point, as this sort of planning is more his bailiwick, and the subject comes up as to whether it's possible to identify the machines in question. Richard says he made little etchings in the case that you can't clearly see but if you know where to reach you can feel them. Carmen also has a map that she and her krewe have compiled, that she's pretty sure shows most if not all of the special slot machines on the casino floor. She's never been able to find a clear pattern, though.
Eddy points out that they're going to need to grab more than one of the machines so it doesn't look like they're targeting specific ones. Carmen points out that she'd have missed that, if the planning had been left solely up to her and her krewe. Eddy says that the transportation shouldn't be too difficult, (Carmen chimes in that she and her krewe have that handled), but getting in and out is going to be the tricky part. They could find a quiet part of the night and maybe try a snatch and grab. Carmen volunteers to do some more recon and acquire some intel that might help them figure out when is the best time to do that, as well as information on security measures, shift changes, etc.
She suggests reconvening the next day at noon. She asks the others if there are any questions, and Richard asks how she knows which machines are the rigged ones. She says the short answer is 'lots of observation and hunches.' But that's it, so she leaves her number with Eddy and departs.
Kenneth is less than comfortable with this in particular, and heists in general. Richard's excited, but Kenneth feels like his integrity is lessened each time he gets dragged into an escapade. Richard, defensively, points out that what happened to Max was a crime of passion. Kenneth counters that that's not any sort of legal term but just something a judge takes into account in sentencing. Eddy admits he got a little over-excited, and Kenneth admits he's starting to crack a little under the weight of the crimes being committed around him.
Eddy asks if there's a legal way that Kenneth could seize the machines, perhaps with the help of the state. Kenneth thinks on it a moment and says it's possible. Richard asks if they could somehow invoke probable cause, which by Kenneth's reaction still seems to be a hard 'maybe.' Eddy says that whatever they do, they should make it as quick as possible and not give him much time to react between first contact and getting hold of the machines. Kenneth says he'll need to make a few phone calls but he might be able to work out something.
And we left off there.
[0]-- I can't remember if I had him say this or not so I'll put this here, but it's worth noting that he put a hit out on her and then as near as he can tell she died in a freak accident anyways.
[1]-- In case it needs to be said, this resolves Richard's final Remembrance. Which covers the Remembrances for the entire group. Huzzah!
[2]-- Long story short, they have something of an obsession with the fact that luck seems to equalize almost everyone in the end in the grand scheme of things, and that focus on this 'end state' has led to their nickname.
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