Atticus leaned back on his bar stool and surveyed his surroundings - the glorious if not shabby Demon's Head had become a second home to him as of late. As an information broker, he commonly had to meet with his clients in a low-key and inconspicuous place. The establishment was in what many would consider an unsavory neighborhood, and as such it tended to repel those who shy away from criminal activity. Of course, Atticus had an array of clients from all walks of life - but it was never a bad idea to stay safe when it comes to being overheard.

It was a quiet night at the pub. Atticus found himself alone save for the barman and a pair of witches bickering in the corner. He'd ordered a triple firewhisky - his usual - and has only begun to sip it as he heard the door open behind him. Contrary to most nights, Atticus was indeed here on business. He'd been contacted by Nate Briggs only that morning, someone who he'd heard plenty of in his time in Knockturn Alley but had never actually met in person.

He was an interesting character from what Atticus had gathered - dropped out of Hogwarts in his fifth year and had since been in and out of Azkaban. Most recently, Nate had turned to thievery. There'd been a new and noteworthy thief in the area who went by the name Hermes and Atticus suspected it could be Nate. Atticus always has his suspicions about various people and things but he felt pretty confident about this one, given the information he'd gathered.

Atticus looked over his shoulder to see who the newcomer was, hoping it was Nate. What could a thief want from him? While Atticus was known to smuggle items from time to time, he was primarily an information broker and gillyweed dealer. Perhaps he was looking for his next big heist?

You really need better friends, Nate thought to himself. The smug wizard's motivation for most things hinged between spite and self-indulgence so it should surprise no one he'd lasted a fresh three weeks of not-thieving once he got out of Azkaban. The thing about crime is that it wasn't really possible to hit a comfortable buzz and stay there. Crime was cumulative. Complications stacked. And before you could say Bob's your uncle, you were in a bind.

And Nate was in a bind.

The shoe had turned up.  The shoe he'd quietly lifted from some high-maintenance witch in Diagon had turned up at the base of a cliff in York. Adjacent to a corpse. Now Briggs was effectively corpse-adjacent as well and that was a level of heat he could not handle. He'd been careful. Keep the jobs low-key. No violence, nothing big. In and out.

It was supposed to be just some stupid shoe.

"Merlin's balls, you're an infant," Nate hissed, slipping into the chair across the young wizard known in Knockturn as Atticus Roark. "This is just lovely. Perfect. He's a child."

Nate pushed his hood back then sniped up Roark's drink and took a burning swig. He set it back down between them, then cast a sound muffling charm around them.

"Alright, mate. What do you know?"

Atticus watched with a smirk as Nate took a seat in front of him. He looked over to the barman and motioned his hand for him to bring another firewhisky to the table. He took a large sip from the one in his hand and set it down.

"This is just lovely. Perfect. He's a child."

"Lovely indeed, isn't it?" Atticus said, raising an eyebrow as Nate took a heart swig of his drink. "But you wouldn't expect it, would you? A child, working my job." He added with a wink. This was a statement he'd heard hundreds of times before in various forms. At first, it was a detriment to his job but as his business and reputation grew he found it only helped him.  He was an unsuspecting and well spoken lad.

The barman shuffled over a moment later and slammed the new glass of whisky on the table. Atticus chuckled as he slid the older drink over to Nate and took a sip of the new one as Nate cast a muffling charm around them.

"Alright, mate. What do you know?"

Atticus raised his eyebrow again with a playfully puzzled look on his face. "I know a number of things about a variety of topics. You're going to have to be more specific." He said casually as he pulled out a cigarette. He lit it with the tip of his finger and leaned back. He considered a few things. Just yesterday, there'd been a ghastly report in the Daily Prophet about the death of a decorated Azakaban guard. He'd been found on the mainland, far from the prison. What piqued Atticus' interest was that a single woman's shoe was found with the body. How odd. What would a woman's shoe be doing there? Furthermore - whose shoe was it?

So he digged a little bit into his contacts and people he knew surrounding Level Two. It was almost certain that the shoe belonged to Genevieve Garcia-Gamp, someone who Atticus knew little about but had decided to look into further if only out of morbid curiosity. After Nate had asked to meet him, he'd also gone around to his usual spots and asked if anyone heard anything unusual over the past week and if they knew much about Nate Briggs. His most reliable contacts were in Knockturn, and it was in the somewhat infamous Shodding Arms Hotel that he found a golden nugget of information. Just a few days before, Nate - who incidentally lived long term in the hotel, had mentioned something about a shoe to the barman. He wasn't able to give further information beyond the fact that he paid his dues on time and generally wasn't a bother. Could it have been the same shoe, or was this a coincidence or even the drunken rumblings of a barkeep?

"If you're referring to yesterday's news, I might know a few things." He said with a smirk after a moment. "Or does this have to do with whatever you were saying to your hotel's barkeep?" He added before taking a long drag from his cigarette.

Nate watched Roark's casual way of winding around the truth, being so careful not to commit to anything in particular. A deft tactic to tease out additional information. Magician's manipulation, common among cads, crooks, and Aurors. Nate knew it well.

Difference was, Nate needed as much information from Roark as Roark might wish to coax out. The whole point of all of this was supposed to be discretion, but he'd have to give that up to avoid another stay in Azkaban.

"That leaky git," Nate scowled. "What the point of a tongueless bartender if they can't keep their mouth shut? I'd kill him if he wasn't already dead."

He sighed again, not keen to start singing songs, but he'd have to.

"It's the shoe. I thought it had to be some kind of expensive blackmail or revenge or send-up or something. Elaborate prank. Someone getting back at that witch. The Witch Weekly Editor."

There were a stack of the magazines in his flat. A guilty pleasure.

"And then it turns up next to a body. I don't need this kind of trouble. So what do you know, Roark?"

"What the point of a tongueless bartender if they can't keep their mouth shut? I'd kill him if he wasn't already dead."

Atticus smirked quietly and winked at Nate. There were always more ways than one to get information out of a person, tongue or not, and he knew them all. He listened quietly as Nate expounded upon what Atticus has guessed. The shoe. That damned shoe. So someone had hired him to steal a shoe. An interesting job, but money is money. Blackmail would've been Atticus' first guess, but clearly that wasn't the case. The theft victim was pretty high profile, perhaps someone wanted to frame her for this?

"A shoe and a body. What a marvelous pair. It does seem that Cinderella's slipper didn't find its way home did it?" He remarked, though he realized the analogy wasn't quite perfect. There was also the matter that Cinderella was a muggle's fairy tale, not a wizard's.

"Do you know who hired you?" He asked as he stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Level Two's been pretty quiet." He added, furrowing his brow as he did. He wasn't fond of being in the dark. He'd picked up the case as a matter of interest but now that Nate was involved, he'd need to get the full story.

"I know bits and pieces. The body was found yesterday with the shoe. They know whose shoe it is too. Genevieve Garcia-Gamp, eh? She's pretty high profile." He said, still stroking his chin. "That being said, how do I know you didn't commit this murder? Furthermore, why should I help you?" He added, pointing a finger at Nate as he took another drag of his cigarette with his other hand.

Nate looked at Roark like he was a moron, a twisted scowl of annoyance. How did Roark know that Nate hadn't killed the guard? For Merlin's sake, there wasn't time to explain how stupid the notion was. Nate's record and reputation spoke for itself. He stayed as far away from the rough stuff as possible, only popping his wand when cornered and, not to Nate's great pride, he was shit at combat. That, and he wasn't stupid enough to plan some kind of bizarre Sherlock Holmes riddle of a crime scene!

In response to Roark's drawling demand for motivation, Nate drew from his pocket a small but heavy drawstring sack. It hit the table between them with a golden clunk.

"It's not a bloody favor, is it." There was no such thing as a favor in Knockturn Alley.

"I'm a thief Roark. Think a bit, will you, ya knob. If I killed that guard why would I be here risking my neck talking to a clean-faced Hogwarts drop-out? I need to keep as far from this as I can."

He leaned in.

"Listen, this job was the picture of disconnected. The gig came at me through seven contacts. Some in person, some by owl. No one knew what the other hand was doing. I don't think any of them even knew this was about a burglary, but what's for sure is I'm the one left holding the bag here."

Atticus smiled as the sack hit the table. He was, after all, a businessman and he didn't like to give anything more than nebulous snippets of information away for free. It usually enticed his clients enough to spark up an actual deal and this case was no exception. Nate seemed somewhat desperate and Atticus didn't blame him. He was in a precarious situation.

"I'm a thief Roark. Think a bit, will you, ya knob. If I killed that guard why would I be here risking my neck talking to a clean-faced Hogwarts drop-out? I need to keep as far from this as I can."

"Just asking questions, Briggs." Atticus said a little too sternly, adopting the man's surname as he had done for him. "It's my job to ask questions, no? Sometimes I'm just looking for the type of response that is given." He added matter of factly. He wasn't fond of the insuations that Briggs' expression was making about him.

"I don't pretend to understand the minds of murderers, Briggs. That being said - I don't think you did this. As I said, I was just asking questions."

"Listen, this job was the picture of disconnected. The gig came at me through seven contacts. Some in person, some by owl. No one knew what the other hand was doing. I don't think any of them even knew this was about a burglary, but what's for sure is I'm the one left holding the bag here."

This surprised Atticus. Seven contacts? He took another sip of whisky before stroking his chin again. "Seven contacts..." He began as looked down at the amber liquid in his glass. "That means only one thing. This job was called for by someone high up - powerful. I can't fathom that a commoner, so to speak, would have the resources to be this secretive." He mused, taking puff from his tobacco.

"Were there any commonalities between the contacts? Social status, looks, age, anything? I can't say I've heard of anything this big coming from my sources, but I don't pretend to be omniscient."

Higher-Up. Powerful. Nate took another long drink of his commandeered spirits. This was the kind of thing he'd been trying to avoid.

Nate leaned forward on his elbows and steepled his fingers against his face, thinking. He was slightly relieved that for the first time in awhile he had someone with half-a-brain to talk to. The others on Calaveras kitchen staff barely rose to the rank of sentient and his neighbors in the Shodding Arms were either not-all-there or literally dead.

"Not that I can tell. One contact was a newspaper boy. Another was tall, salt-and-pepper sort. Looked like he worked in banking or something. There was an Italian witch in the Park..." he shook his head. He'd thought of this already. Nothing tied them together, not that he could figure out. And it would be impossible to find any of them again, nevermind the four owl letters, which he'd dutifully destroyed.

"The dead guy. Shahidi. He was an Azkaban guard."

There was no love lost between Nate and the guards at the prison, but he didn't wish them dead. He decided he should clarify.

"I'm not looking to save the day or get justice. I need the lay of the land. Am I going to have Aurors at my door?" Again.[1] As soon as he asked it, he had to guess Roark couldn't know that. He sat back and sighed, regretting sticking his neck out.

1.	Oct 14 2008 - The Long Wand of the Law

Atticus sat quietly for a moment, weighing the facts he was just given. There was no apparent connection between the messengers, which suggested a few things: The person or persons behind this job have access to quite the variety of minions and they also have access to a lot of gold. Paying off over a half dozen people for one job wasn't going to be cheap. He'd mentioned this as an initial thought earlier in the conversation, but thought it was worth revisiting as a basis to work his ideas around.

There was also the theft's victim, Genevieve Garcia-Gamp. She was fairly high profile.

"The dead guy. Shahidi. He was an Azkaban guard."

Atticus nodded. "I figured you'd know him - knew him." He said quietly as he took another sip from his glass. "Why do you think they chose him, specifically? Would he have been a target? Or was he simply the unlucky choice?" Atticus mused as he stared at the lit end of his cigarette.

"I haven't heard anything about you around Level Two." He said reassuringly, hoping to temper the man's apprehension. "There is nothing to suggest you are in danger right now. While I will admit there is the possibility that someone wanted to frame you with that shoe, there is as much or more of a possibility Miss Gamp was the framing target." He said, breaking his stare from the ember and meeting Nate's gaze.

"I will suggest you remain generally inconspicuous for the time being.  It would be unwise to draw unwanted attention to yourself while this crime is being investigated. Do you have an alibi as to how you make money? How you spend your days, generally? I could arrange people to cover any lies you have to spin. This bar's as good a place as any for establishing an alibi."

"Mate, I didn't know him," Nate corrected. He'd been in Azkaban, yes, but he hadn't run into Shahidi. He must have worked a different block. "No way it was chance, though. Does anything about this seem ... lucky to you?"

It wasn't accusatory. "Everything carefully done. To a tee. It was the left shoe, understand? Not the right. The left one. Exact times, exact places. If anything, I'm unlucky one."

At least Roarke didn't know of any rumblings. Nate ran his hand through his hair, allowing that to be good news. That was what his money was worth honestly. It would have been nice if there was anything in the air about who'd done the murder but with how meticulous it all was it wasn't a surprise there hadn't been a breath. Then Nate had the notion that he could very well be the only one involved who'd stuck his neck out. Could be a miscalculation, that.

"I'm a cook at Calaveras and I live like it. All's I need is something for night of the 18th. Here's fine. Beer."

He moved to get up and put another three galleons on the table. "Let me know if you hear anything."