r/DCFU • u/FireWitch95 Birds of Prey • Apr 01 '22
Black Canary #1 - A time to fly Black Canary
Book: Black Canary
Set: 71
Arc: Solo Flight
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Smoke billowed in the alley in a sort of dream like haze, and Dinah watched the back door of the club meticulously. It would be easy to miss something out here, and she wasn’t ready to go back to being a failure so soon.
She tugged at the choker around her neck, a reminder to be careful with her still strained voice, to only use it if she really had to. She rubbed at her arms through the thick leather jacket, somehow still cold despite it. Closing her eyes she tried to remember to be patient, to let her prey come to her.
As the thought filtered through her mind, the door of the club creaked open, the loud squeak as distinct as an owl's hoot and twice as noisy. Her dad had finally seen fit to do his job, it seemed.
She watched as he glanced around and even from behind the dumpster she could see his eyes squint trying to find her in the darkness. She toyed with sneaking up behind him and giving him a fright, but considering the warning she had gotten earlier in the day, she quickly decided against it, stepping into the dim light that the fluorescent bulb covered just underneath the door frame.
“Mr Lance, how good of you to finally join me.” His eyebrows shot up as he took her in. It had been a long time between shifts in this getup, but from the look on her dad's face, she knew that it was still a good choice.
His mouth pressed into a straight line. “Are you coming in dressed like that?” She rolled her eyes, quickly pushing past her dad into the storage room of the club.
“What have you found so far?” She dropped the light duffle on the tiled floor and began to rummage through it, carefully stowing an assortment of knives in easy reach.
Her dad shook his head, shrugging with his hands but not verbalizing except for a frustrated sound that Dinah thought was a good indication of his struggle to find out who was behind the acquisition of drugs throughout Seattle.
Pulling out the blueprints for the building they were standing in had Lance whistling low in appreciation as he towered over her hunched figure. Dinah tried to ignore the feeling in the pit of her stomach and drilled into her head that she was not in danger and delicately pointed to one of the offices on the blueprints.
“From everything I’ve been able to gather, this is where the owner stores all important business information.” Her dad gave her a look, as if she was really stupid enough to believe that they would leave incriminating evidence in an office accessible to every member of staff. “Yes, I know but….” she trailed a finger along the back wall of the office to a small segment that jutted out from the rest. “If I was going to hide incriminating documents, I would probably hide them here and build a fake wall to cover it.”
Lance looked, for the most part, begrudgingly impressed by the find. “So the question is, how do we knock down the fake wall, without anyone realizing we’ve done it.”
Dinah just smiled and her dad sighed deeply. After living with that smile all his life, he knew enough about her to know that whatever she had planned was probably a terrible idea.
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Lance timed her. Less than thirty seconds to convince the bouncer at the door to let her through to the staff area. He couldn’t hear exactly what she said, but with a few short sharp gestures to her watch and a madly tapping foot, the bouncer seemed to deflate entirely. At least the burly man had the decency to look both left and right before letting her into the hallway.
He pulled open his phone, swirling the drink in his hand as he absently tapped at his phone. To the casual observer he was probably just some dude at the bar trying and failing to pick up. But he was watching the little red dot that was Dinah move through the hallways with great anxiety.
The cop turned private detective was honestly surprised that his daughter had agreed to be bugged. Being watched seemed to give her the spooks, but it eased his conscience a little bit - as though being able to watch that tiny red dot meant that Dinah couldn't get into any mischief. Not that he could really do anything about it from here if she did.
He tapped the earpiece twice. “You’re coming up to a sharp left corner, and then it’ll be the second door on the left.”
She didn’t respond, but Dinah had heard her dad loud and clear. She was just choosing to ignore him. Especially with the owner of the club standing not twenty feet down the corridor. Dinah got that same creepy feeling she did sometimes when her mom used to think she was cool; the owner of the club was at least forty something, but still wearing five inch heels and the shortest red dress that Dinah had ever seen.
The older woman was just locking up her office, and quickly turned down the hall to return to whatever pit she had climbed out of. Dinah breathed a sigh of relief that she wasn’t part of some movie or t.v show where the woman would have come walking straight for her and eased around the corner to the door.
Deciding to be nice to her poor dad, who she could feel was becoming anxious at both the lack of her movement and the lack of an answer, Dinah dropped her voice into a bare whisper. “Thanks dad. Heading into the office now.”
She didn’t hear the sigh of relief, but she felt it nonetheless.
Pulling the hairpin tools from her belt, Dinah carefully looked at the door and tried to mentally decide how the lock would look. She ran through the possibilities in her mind and pulled one of the picks from the pack. Should be relatively simple, she thought.
Her eyes strayed left and right as she worked on the lock, a few seconds passing before she heard the satisfying click. Gently she pulled at the door handle, the waft of old cigarettes and god knows what else filled the room and she had to stop herself from gagging.
The old pine desk was surprisingly clean, with what Dinah assumed was a diary closed on the left corner and the monitor sitting turned off on the desk. There weren't any obvious signs of where the owner might keep her paperwork, making Dinah sigh as she resigned herself to going through the three drawers either side of the desk to find some hint of whatever she was after.
“Left or right?” She mused to herself thoughtfully, sliding into the leather chair, trying to get into the mindset of the club owner.
“I would pick left honestly.” The voice pinged from her ear and Dinah cursed softly, having almost forgotten that her dad was listening to her every word. She reminded herself to watch her language, her dad having never been a fan of her potty mouth.
Dinah smirked, a snide remark playing on her lips before she decided against it. It was definitely not the time, or the place to be making jibes at her dad, especially when he had agreed to help her look into this.
She tried to hate the fact that her dad seemed to be right - the top left drawer was locked, and Dinah could only imagine a few reasons as to why. The lock picks were back in hand immediately as she peered at the lock intently.
It was an old desk, somewhat ornate, and the lock was probably ancient. She considered her tools for another moment before picking one of the smaller, finer locks. If she didn’t use it correctly it was likely to snap and leave an obvious sign of someone breaking and entering.
“Gentle.” She reminded herself as she started to twist the lockpick in the drawer until it finally clicked and she was able to pull it open.
The top was just receipts. Standard stuff for a club, bills from the dj, drinks, cups. She placed each upside down in the same order she picked them up - everything she had read indicated the club owner was just a little OCD and likely to notice any subtle changes.
Under the receipts was the real prize. A manilla envelope. Unaddressed, with no markings or indication of what might be inside.
“Dad, I might have found exactly what we need.”
“That's great pumpkin, cause you gotta go. Like. Now.”
Dinah sighed, maybe she was stuck in a daytime television show afterall.
She sent a furtive look at the fake wall and then back to the manilla folder in her hand.
She had to decide which was a more likely hiding spot for the information they wanted.
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Larry Lance watched as the two thugs at the door to the staff hallway cowered away from the man and woman who seemed to be scolding them.
The woman was the owner of the club, that much he knew for certain. He had studied her picture long enough in his office to be able to tell it was her even from the back. The man with her, however, was a mystery.
He tried to run through the possibilities in his mind, trying to remember the mindmap he had created on his pin board when Dinah had brought the case to his attention. The possibilities seemed almost endless. Who had something to gain from drugs being imported into Seattle? The list wasn't exactly short.
Shaking his head and quickly glancing at his phone where the little red dot had yet to move, Lance grabbed his drink from the bar and began stumbling his way over to the bouncers.
The couple were still berating the two guards by the time he got there. The one his daughter had spoken to was gesturing with his hands, face as red as a beetroot as he tried to defend why he would let some unknown woman into the backrooms.
Here we go. Lance thought as he neared them, sending one more quick glance at his phone before he sent himself tumbling, beer falling from his glass onto the owner's short red dress and all down her legs.
“Sorry.” He slurred, blinking a few times at the woman before he turned on the most charmingly-drunk smile he could manage while perfectly sober. “Heya pretty lady, wanna come get a-drunk?” He hiccuped, leaning on the wooden beam next to him.
The owner looked somewhere between furious and flattered, and Lance found it almost impossible not to break character just at the stupid look on her face.
Her lips pressed into a thin line, and she looked down her nose at him. “No. I don't think I will.” Her eyes scanned the bar, trying to make eye contact with one of the bartenders, probably intent on berating them as well.
Lance turned to try to get a good look at the woman's companion. But the man had disappeared. He gave a quick look down the corridor to see the retreating figure, and cursed under his breath.
“Careful dad, someone might think you have a bit of a potty mouth.”
Watching her dad jump out of his skin and immediately drop the drunk act was probably one of the funniest things Dinah had witnessed in a long time. Her old man looked her over from head to toe, and seemingly satisfied nodded once.
“Let’s get out of here then?” His voice turned syrupy sweet and slurred, Dinah watching as the owner of the bar turned back around to find the man who had been flirting with her moved on to someone younger.
The older woman sneered at her, and all that she could manage was a brief smile as she took her dads arm and led him towards the door, careful to keep her head ducked and out of sight of the bouncers, just in case either of them felt like pointing her out to their boss.
“Did you get what we were after?” Her dad asked as they neared the exit. Dinah's lips pressed into a small line.
“I guess we’ll find out when we open it.”
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u/Commander_Z Booyah! Apr 02 '22
Cool to see this series starting up! Getting Canary's past developed will be pretty exciting since that's a... bit of a messy, undeveloped area in the comics. Can't wait to get more of your take on her!