Meeting Lilah Morgan (open to freelilah)

[a_sloane]

There were worse ways to pass one's time than to open up business negotations with a woman of mystery. Sloane had dealings with Wolfram and Hart before, mostly concerned with the Credit Dauphine cover for SD-6, but he himself, as a private person, had never been a client. Huge and ruthless organisations he could not control were not exactly trustworthy.

On the other hand, any lawyer serving for Wolfram and Hart would know their business, or would be dead. Lilah Morgan appeared to be very much alive, and rather intriguingly not listed as a lawyer acting in any current case, something which he had checked out, using the APO access to the relevant databases without hesitation. She had been head of the Los Angeles special projects department, as she had mentioned, but no activity was listed since. All of which opened up a can of interesting possibilities.

Arvin Sloane had no intention of telling a stranger just what he had in mind, but he decided some preliminary dealings, perhaps involving some of his less traceable bank accounts from his time with OmniFam, would be a good way to find out whether Lilah Morgan was the right person for what he privately termed "the project".

His pardon agreement banned him from any Rambaldi research, unless, he thought cynically, said research would be to the government's advantage. Well, there were other ways. Nadia's current state was due to a Rambaldi formula Elena had injected her with. It stood to reason that somewhere, in some manuscript by the Master which Sloane had somehow not managed to get hold on so far, there might be a clue for a cure. Of course, he had tapped all resources known to him by now. Except one. Wolfram and Hart was rumoured to have the greatest collection of manuscripts and artifacts known to man. And he needed something - or someone - to open that collection to him.

If Lilah Morgan turned out to be the wrong person, well. Then he would still have spent some hopefully agreeable hours dining at Orris with what a vague memory told him was an attractive brunette, and what her comments so far had shown to be an intelligent woman.

There were, indeed, worse ways to spend one's time.

Comments

[freelilah.livejournal.com]

Lilah's main impressions of Sloane at the charity event had been not too tall and probably very rich or very powerful from the way Linwood's chatting him up. Which, at that particular event, had not made him stand out -- and there had been other things on Lilah's mind, such as keeping a moody vampire from crashing the party and ruining all her hard work.

Now, though, as Sloane stands and welcomes her, she remembers something else, a quality that warned her to back away and invited her to come closer, at the same time. It was in his smile, a look edged with a trace of secret amusement. It was as though he knew something that no one else in the room did. It's not far from the way she imagines she might have looked the moment before taking Linwood's head off.

Now Sloane actually mentions the man, who Lilah hasn't thought of in ages, and Lilah puts on a secret smile of her own. "Linwood wasn't so bad. I mean he did tend to go on and on, and sometimes it was enough to make you want to cut his throat. Figuratively speaking." Here she resists raising a hand to the red scarf tied at her own neck. Instead, she lowers her voice and says, with a look of grave concern, "One shouldn't speak ill of the dead." Especially not the ones you killed. It seems a bit like gloating. Though who is Lilah kidding. She likes gloating.

[a-sloane.livejournal.com]

Sloane wasn't familiar with the exact manner of Linwood's demise, but he was more than familiar with getting rid of fools in the way of one's ambition, especially if they threatened one's own life, too. He usually preferred to use other people in order to achieve this - one one fondly remembered occasion the CIA, as the Alliance had really served its purpose and had dared to demand he should kill his wife - but sometimes one had to act oneself. It wouldn't suprise him if Lilah Morgan had; she struck him as the thorough kind of woman who would.

"Shouldn't one?"

he asks back, one eyebrow raised, while the waiter pulls her chair for her and Lilah gracefully sits down.

"De mortuis nihil nisi bene always struck me as a rather maudlin motto, though I'd agree that the pleasure of speaking ill of the dead is nothing to the pleasure of speaking ill of the living."

Sitting down himself, he takes the wine card the waiter offers.

"Of course the second is a bit riskier, but what is life without risks? And speaking of risks... I hear the 2004 Kiedricher Grafenberg Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese is one of the better Cépages nobles they offer here. Of course, it might be a bit too salty, but sometimes one has to take chances, doesn't one?"

[freelilah.livejournal.com]

"I always took it as a matter of self-preservation,"

Lilah speaks in a solemn tone to signal that she is not being the least bit serious.

"The dead have better means of eavesdropping," she explains, "and if they find out what you said, they can haunt you. And they're much harder to get rid of than a living nuisance."

She smiles.

"Exorcisms are a bitch."

She looks politely at the wine list, and agrees with Sloane's suggestion. In her current state, her senses are almost nonexistent, taste and smell particularly. They could literally be drinking horse piss, and she probably wouldn't even notice. Still. Appearances.

"So is Los Angeles your home base these days, Mr. Sloane? I had heard something about Zurich --" With a nostalgic smile, she says, "California is nice, of course, but I do sometimes feel a tug for the days of my own Grand Tour."

There is actually some truth to this statement -- she did enjoy the months she spent in Europe as a young woman. She also remembers that the condition of "nostalgia" was once identified as a disease.

[a-sloane.livejournal.com]

She sounds quite serious, and for a moment, he allows himself to believe and hope she is. He'd pay almost any price to make one particular dead woman return to him. Though with the irony his life is prone to feature, he probably wouldn't be haunted by Emily, as they once had faked he was for the Alliance' benefit, but by one of his more obnoxious victims, like the late unlamented Robert Lindsey.

The dead are dead and remain dead, he almost says, but catches himself in time. You do not reveal a weakness to an intelligent enemy or ally, if you can avoid it. So he orders the wine and then responds to her other statements.

"Zurich is lovely, and yes, I spent almost two years there, before some professional and personal obligations brought me back. Still. Sometimes I wonder whether all those years in Europe haven't made me something of an exile here."

Which is actually true, though he thinks of the times in Italy rather than in Zurich. The first time he had visited the country, he had been an adolescent. Later, again, on his honeymoon. In the year after "Laura" died and Jack got jailed, Arvin and Emily had lived in Italy once more, and it was there Emily had lost the child only they knew about, and Sloane had found Rambaldi instead. Italy was where Emily had chosen him and died, and where Nadia had saved him and left. Italy had seen him more happy and more unhappy than any other country.

"Do I detect a fellow traveller? How deligthful," he says lightly, voice not betraying any of these thoughts. It's as good a subject as any. He wants her to move some sums to and from his European accounts, after all, as a first test of her reliability.

"What was your favourite destination?"

[freelilah.livejournal.com]

"Oh yes," Lilah smiles. "The travelers' disease. First diagnosed by Shakespeare, I believe. Specifically Rosalind."

Amateur theatrics had been a hobby since high school -- everyone said acting improved your debate skills -- and the women's college, had a particular fondness for the cross-dressing comedies.

"'Traveller:, look you lisp and wear strange suits, disable all the benefits of your own country, be out of love with your nativity and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are, or I will scarce think you have swam in a gondola.'"

She smiles, to let him know they are both in the same gondola. "I spent almost a year in Italy, when I was studying art. I wrote an honors thesis on Caravaggio to prove it. It's a very poor thesis," she adds, "as I was a bit caught up in all wine, women, and song or -- the appropriate equivalents."

The equivalents here in this case shopping, fucking (women and men), and -- this being the '80s, if only the tail end -- copious amounts of very good cocaine. As for the thesis, her statement was, as Sloane might suspect, a statement of false modesty, but only of a sort. She thought it was probably a pretty good thesis, but, only becaue she had a allowed a smitten English art historian to write it for her, while she got high with a houseboy.

"Lovely country," she smiles, and means it. The nostalgia disease again. I must be getting sentimental in my death. She idly wonders if she should relocate to Rome; she imagines the differently alive community in that city must be thriving indeed. Though she has also heard a rumor of its being infested by vampire slayers and their paramours.

[a-sloane.livejournal.com]

"Italia," Sloane returns fondly, answering her Shakespeare with a Byron quote, "and its fatal gift of beauty. I love the language, that soft bastard Latin/ Which melts like kisss from a female mouth/And sounds as if it should be writ on satin/ With syllables which breathe of the sweet south/ And gentle liquids gliding all so pat in/ That not a single accent seems uncouth/ Like our harsh northern whistling, grunting guttural/ Which we're obliged to hiss, and spit, and sputter all."

"But," he adds, tone subtle changing, "I have not the slightest doubt that your thesis is excellent. You don't strike me as a woman who'd allow anything poor to cling to her name. Which, of couse, my dear Ms. Morgan, is why we're here."

The waiter approaches once more and asks him whether they're ready to order, and this time Sloane doesn't ask Lilah for her opinion; he orders ravioli filled with shrimp mousse and shitake mushroom sauce for her. Which, if Orris has kept up its standard, should be delicious, but it's also a very minor power play.

"Idleness is all very pleasant once in a while, but after a year or two, it must be dreadfully boring," Sloane continues. "For an intelligent woman such as yourself."

Which is his way of telling her he's aware that whatever her connection to Wolfram and Hart is right now, it can't be something comparable to her previous position.

[freelilah.livejournal.com]

Lilah smiles at Sloane's quotation, and also at the hint in his comment about her thesis. He's very good at picking up on the things a person doesnt' quite say, the suggestions she doesn't quite make. He also will have the good grace, she suspects, not to try to engage her in a conversation about chiarascuro or some such nonsense that bored her a decade ago.

She betrays no resentment as he orders for both of them. Maybe he's trying to needle her, but if so, it doesn't work -- she never understood the women who could work up a high dudgeon over the benign chauvinism of an older generation. Besides, now that she's let him order, she'll be perfectly within her right to expect him to pay. And she won't be able to taste the food, anyway, so she doesn't care very much.

His next comment is a more pointed barb -- so he knows or suspects she's not working for the firm. But she was prepared for this possibility and takes it in stride,

"So now we come to business." She raises her glass, and an eyebrow. "If, indeed, you are referring to business. I can think of other means, after all, for filling idle days."

Lilah meets his eyes. Dealing with Sloane will be easier if she can determine whether he wants to fuck her and, if so, whether it's an idle fantasy or a concrete goal. She remembers Linwood's territorial bitching, before the fundraiser, that Sloane was a happily married man and Lilah shouldn't be getting any ideas. But that was years ago and, as Sloane lifts his own glass, she performs the obligatory wedding-ring check. Only one factor, of course; not a determinative one.

[a-sloane.livejournal.com]

Sloane is still wearing his ring, and, in widower's fashion, Emily's, which he has done since her death, but that is immaterial to what Lilah is suggesting. It has been a while - Judy Barnett, to be precise, which didn't exactly set the best precedence for mixing business with pleasure - and Lilah Morgan is both very attractive and definitely not the type of woman he falls in love with, which is something in her favour. He has never managed to fall out of love with anyone, and as he has no intention to offer Lilah Morgan that kind of power over him, he would withdraw at the first suspicion she could be more than a useful and clever aquaintance.

"Undoubtedly you can,"

Sloane replies, returning her toast.

"You strike me as a creative woman as well."

Which is neither a yes or a no to her unspoken question. They might end up in bed at some point if she wants, because she is rather attractive and he's middle-aged, not dead, but it is neither the reason nor a condition for hiring her as his lawyer.

"Creativity, of course, should be properly appreciated. I'm afraid the US goverment would be rather unappreciative of some reminders of my time in Europe. They might even call them unpatriotic. But I do want them taken care of. I'm sentimental that way. Do you think you can do that, Ms Morgan?"

There is always the chance that she's a plant. Arvin Sloane has sent pretty young women to fool ego-ridden powerful men with secrets often enough to be aware of that possibility. If she is, the first things he'll tell her, some of his secret accounts, won't give her much rope to try and hang him with. If she isn't, and doesn't have the patience to wait for more, she's also not the right person. If she has the patience and deals with the accounts in an imaginative and clever way, he'll go one step further and have that conversation about the Wolfram and Hart Rambaldi artifacts and manuscripts with her.

[freelilah.livejournal.com]

Lilah's curiosity about Sloane's marital status reflects no warm-fuzzy sentiments regarding the sanctity of the institution. Married men are, based on her own observations, easier to seduce, less emotionally demanding or generally tiresome, and far far simpler to blackmail.

A widower presented complications that she hasn't encountered before. Although she had occasionally drawn this comparison regarding Wesley's feelings toward his former employer (much to to the man's annoyance, which was, of course, the point).

In any case, Sloane's response suggests he finds her attractive (a good thing for both their sakes that she isn't aware of the "rather" qualifier) but that his immediate intentions relate to business. This is more than satisfactory for Lilah. She generally prefers the company of older men to her own peers, and Sloane is charming on top of his obvious power. But, despite prevailing opinion that would cast her as the office whore -- Lilah doesn't like to mix work up with sex when she can possibly avoid it.

The hinted possibility of sex is, of course, a potent weapon. Particularly as her job so often dealt in one-on-one recruitment of assets for the firm. But for the most part, it was an act. She talked the talk but kept fulfilment just out of reach. There had been two exceptions -- one too obvious to mention, too headache-inducing to analyze, and still ongoing. The other wasn't Angel -- OK, there had been that one time, but he started it and she just wanted to see what his game was and then the bastard bit her, and anyway, she's reasonably sure that somehow or another it wasn't really him. It wasn't that Slayer either; there were too many lawyers involved in that one for Lilah to work her one-on-one magic and, anyway, to be quite honest, Faith scared the shit out of her. No, it was that stupid redheaded daddy-issues bitch from Ohio who could swing from helpless to homicidal in ten seconds flat. She had run off to Angel, of course. Not that Lilah's bitter.

Most of the time, of course, her involvement with clients is entirely professional. And Arvin Sloane, whatever faults he may have, seems entirely unlikely to discard her in favor of Mr. Broody Manpire.

So she listens to Sloane's proposal, and nods. Even without an official place at the firm, she has enough connections and favors to call in that whatever he is asking for should be a breeze.

"I'm interested," she says, "Go on." And she can't resist adding, "Some of us have met enough patriots to last a lifetime."

[a-sloane.livejournal.com]

"Someone else's lifetime, I hope," he says crisply, and hands her a paper with a new numbers and names. All written by your standard computer and printed out by your standard printer. "Yours should excel in length."

The waiter arrives with some hors d'oeuvres; after he leaves again, Sloane continues:

"There are several European accounts here I want to be closed, with their contents transferred to new accounts, in a way that even in the event of my execution would not allow the government to touch them, yet keeps them within the United States. Now I realize that it might be a somewhat mundane task for a woman of your abilities, but still, mundane things make excellent building stones, wouldn't you agree?"

He leans back.

"Besides. There is one account here I do wish to be traced to someone."

With the exception of the very few people he cares about, who are allowed to do anything to him, Sloane is not a forgiving person. He would have killed Howard Dean in any event, though at a time of his own choosing if events had not played out otherwise. This left him with another sadly anonymous enemy whose identity he had yet to discover, and Dean's assistant, the elusive Peyton. Who as it turns out has some relations in Texas, named Burkle; according to her file, she visited her aunt, uncle and cousin quite often. Not that Sloane has anything against the Burkles, but then, Peyton presumably doesn't have anything against Nadia, either.

"As you say, patriots can be obnoxious. Especially Texans."

Texans important from the East Coast, but his being less than impressed by the current administration was neither here nor there.

"Though it's quite possible in these times, wouldn't you agree, that all that artless Texan patriotism hides who knows what business connnections to foreign sources."

Asking Lilah Morgan to frame the Burkles could of course backfire, if she was a plant, but their actual connection to Peyton gave him enough leaveway to justify this. Jack wasn't naive. He would see this as a possible weapon to lure a crucial Prophet Five operative out of the woodworks and actually greenlight it.

If Lilah wasn't a plant, well, then it could be more.

[freelilah.livejournal.com]

Making the European accounts untraceable should be a snap. Ilona in the Rome office still owes Lilah a favor or three.

Involving Burkles from Texas could be trickier. Of course, these may turn out to have nothing to do with the Burkle she is familiar with -- she'll have to check that out first -- but if they do, there could be a conflict. It's not as though Lilah cares about Fred's family at all, but Wesley is still her best contact at the Los Angeles office. She has spent more than a little time contemplating exactly what she would have to do in order to alienate him forever; she's pretty sure that messing with Fred's Norman Rockwell relations would figure high on the list.

Of course, if she could pull this off without having her name attached to it, you're talking win-win. She indulges, for a moment, the idea that Wesley might even come to her for advice on the problem. Honestly, as though she cares about that.

She wants to know exactly what Sloane wants done with the frame-up, but she thinks he might prefer to explain in his own time. Too many questions might make her potential conflict more obvious.

Instead she responds to his comment, though she deliberately misinterprets it a bit. "I'd like to think so. I'm much more comfortable in a world of realpolitik than one run by the real naive patriots of the word." Here she's telling more or less the truth. If the current wars are really being run by oil interests, her only real regret is that she's not seeing any of the money.

"Call it a failure of imagination on my part, Mr. Sloane, but it's the people who really believe the rhetoric they spout who worry me."

Again, she's skating dangerously close to the truth, but she's curious how Sloane will react. She grew up surrounded by Cold Warriors, and, though she guesses that Sloane was born a decade after her own father, there's something about him that reminds her of the men who used to come and go late at night from the family house in Georgetown. She can't say why she feels this, and in a moment she feels silly. He's just a banker, a money man, who got the government on his back because he doesn't like to pay his taxes the conventional way. Anything else they say about him is just so much smoke and slander. Right?

[a-sloane.livejournal.com]

Sloane takes the fact she voices no objection to mean she'll do it, or at least pretend to; and so he consider the matter settled for now, and replies to her statement during which he consumed the hors d' oeuvres.

"I dare say you're right, Ms Morgan. There is nothing more dangerous than a man of faith, acting on his convictions."

Which is a bit of a self-advertisement, but then again, why not? She appears to be fishing; let's see how she handles some bait, Sloane thinks.

"Except, perhaps, one who finds his old convictions less than satisfying. A dear friend and I used to joke that we shared an unsentimental patriotism and devotion to our wives, back in the day, and yet we came to... but you do not want to hear an old man's reflections. They're worse than overblown rethoric. Do you, Ms Morgan?"

She has eaten her hors d'oeuvre as well, without signs of either pleasure or displeasure, and the waiter, clearing the table, gives Sloane a bit of a concerned look. He's the chef's son, and has some professional pride. Sloane raises an eyebrow, and the waiter dissappears again.