They were nibbling the last bit of that glorious cheese off the crusts (possibly also worth eating; Foggy was still evaluating) when the text came from Karen. We need to talk. Your place again.
Matt got a second text as they were walking home, the phone announcing it as being from Jennifer. "I'll listen to it later," he said. "I know she doesn't want me for anything tonight."
Which meant he'd probably go out, unless Karen kept them a very long time. She felt tempted to encourage the other woman to do so.
They came in to find Karen had again brought beer. She'd already drunk halfway through the first bottle, which didn't make her look any less wound up.
Foggy walked fast to get her beer, Matt hurrying after her, which was how they got them open before she burst out, "You know that white guy Carson Wolf murdered in public in broad daylight? Maybe not as dead as we thought. Also, possibly Micro."
Matt actually laughed, the asshole. Foggy made a large angry movement with her arm, but that only reduced him to mild giggling.
Until Karen said, "Ellison got a source basically saying he'd been leaking dirty secrets. Then he got a visit from Wolf who spun the whole 'it'll interfere with an ongoing investigation' act, and it worked; he shelved the story. He let me have a copy of it." And she'd come with copies for Foggy and Matt both prepared.
They both read in silence, and then Matt said, "I'm afraid if Frank gets his hands on this, he'll go after Wolf, and there's a good chance that'll end with him killing him."
"And even putting aside the moral problem with that," Foggy added, "The four of us and our clients probably need him alive, Karen."
"But if we don't tell him," said Karen, "what do we do instead? We and possibly this one hacker who is who-knows-where in this city are the only ones who have even multiple parts of the picture of this powerful man, and I am not going to just sit on that knowledge. At the very least, I want to know just what Micro had on him."
Foggy saw the twitch on Matt's face, and sighed, "You want to go interrogate him in Frank's place, don't you?"
Matt actually was silent for a moment, then said, "I know it might not be the best idea, if he thinks we sent Daredevil. But I'm not sure what the alternatives are. Unless we can track down this hacker."
"Well," said Karen, "if he was able to track Frank down, and also that he knew it was him who'd killed the Watchdogs in the first place, he's obviously somewhere with a lot of hardware, and maybe not a lot of other people. He also does have a wife and two children, and I don't know if they have any idea whether he's still alive or not, but..."
"If he's in Manhatten," said Matt, "I could probably find him within a week or so. But are we sure he's even in New York City at all?"
"Ghost in New York was what he told Frank," said Karen. "I wish we could get more on him. I wonder...if maybe you went to Frank, and tried to get more details out of him? Unless you think Frank would try to hurt you, but...well, I don't think he would."
"Probably not," Foggy said, "but you might not be able to get rid of him before you find Micro. We don't even know how good that guy is at tracking, but obviously he's pretty good at it. And I would not trust Frank not to kill our quarry."
"Maybe," Karen started hesitantly, "if we talked to Frank about why we need him not to..."
"I wouldn't trust to that with Wolf," said Matt, "because I think there's a good chance he might be linked to that so-called sting gone wrong that killed his family."
That felt like a shock for only a moment, until Foggy thought about it. "I suppose if he did try to kill one guy to keep him from revealing what he knew...."
"And he has links to Kandahar, where Frank was deployed," Karen chimed in. "And really, all sorts of stuff happens in Afghanistan they don't want anyone knowing about. It's very possible, you know, that we haven't known half the truth of why that shootout at the carousel happened, especially when the woman who organized the sting got gunned down with extreme prejudice right in front of us-you know, we assumed it was Schoonover at the trigger, but he's not alive to confirm it either, and it could've easily been someone else still alive."
"Karen," Foggy said, "you do realize that if you're saying you think that whole thing was a very elaborate attempt to shut a certain someone up, the person who could confirm whether or not they actually might want to do that is still very much alive?" She shook her head. "I can't believe I'm suggesting this."
"She doesn't have to be the one to ask him about it," Matt said quickly. "She's not even necessarily the person most likely to get a confession out of him. He might not be willing to talk to her about it."
"He knows I'm no innocent flower," said Karen. "He doesn't know everything about me, but he does know that." But after another moment's thought, she added, "But I can't see myself having this conversation with him without revealing I talked with the two of you."
"If that's the case," said Matt, "I might as well come with you. At least for the first part of your meeting, though if he really wants to talk to only you, I can retreat."
"How far?" Karen asked. "He knows about the superhearing, right?"
"Yeah," said Foggy. "I suppose you could lurk up on the buildings nearby and come running if you feel you have to intervene."
Matt looked pleased at the idea, but Karen shook her head. "I don't like being less than honest with Frank. And anyway, he probably wouldn't trust you enough for that. You come with me, you come with me, simple as that. And really, I don't know if he would believe you weren't in earshot if you didn't come. Even if I said you weren't and he believed I was telling the truth, he'd likely just think you were there without my knowing it."
She was probably right about all that, so they agreed to it, and Karen went home to put the flowers up in her window. Matt kissed Foggy in the way he often did just before going to put the suit on; Foggy wished she knew how to feel about that. She'd retreated to her own work by the time he was heading out the roof entrance.
"He should keep from killing Wolf for now," said Karen. "He wasn't too happy about it, though. Especially because his opinion of your clients isn't too high right now. The way he talked about Sam Wilson...he seems to see him and Rogers as having both betrayed the country they'd vowed to serve."
"Just by going rogue? That's a bit rich coming from him," said Foggy, because it was. "Does he even know about the part where Rogers was expected to just stand by and let the man who was his old sergeant as well as his best friend be murdered?"
"We should've pointed that out," Matt commented. "It might need to be spelled out to him, since I don't think they're actually admitting to it, but I think he'd believe it once it was. He's certainly been through enough himself for that, and if he doesn't know that now, I'm afraid he's going to find out very soon."
"He was involved with some very bad stuff in Afghanistan," said Karen, and her voice was trembling, just a little. "Stuff overseen by the CIA. He believes they had Congressional approval, but, well, I wonder. He also thought to tell me this time that this isn't the first he's heard from Micro. You remember how his house burned down?"
"That was Micro?!" Foggy had to suppress to urge to demand they both run far away from this and let Frank do whatever the hell he wanted with this hacker.
Until Karen said, "No, it was Frank himself. He just..." She had to stop there, before continuing, "But before he did it, he found a CD there labelled 'Micro.' Containing a video of what he and his squadmates did under Schoonover, on CIA orders. He wouldn't tell us any more about its contents than that, but whatever they were doing on there, he wasn't proud of it. Might have even been downright ashamed. I....I couldn't entirely tell."
Matt put an arm around her. She leaned into him without protest, eyes closed.
"And you think they might have tried to kill him to keep him from telling the wrong people?" Foggy tried to keep it gentle as she nonetheless asked, "But what about his squadmates? Have they gone after them, too? Who even filmed them in the first place? Does he have any idea?"
"If he did, he didn't say," said Matt. "We did ask about his squadmates, but he's only kept track of one of them, and he's apparently doing just fine, got out and has a successful company here in New York. But he seems to think he pissed off their CIA liaison in particular-hinted there was some sort of altercation. He did say the incident he got the medal for was related to their activities, and remember, he protested the mission beforehand, since he rightly though it was a trap."
"Who knows, they might have been trying to get them killed on purpose," said Karen, pulling away from Matt. "And now they're after both of these men for what they know, committing murders to cover up probably more murders and who knows what else..."
Reminding her they didn't actually know that for sure was probably useless, the state she was in. "If you're right," Foggy said instead, "I think all three of us and most of our friends really want to see that bastard arrested, or at least discredited. If we don't want to confront him just yet, then we want to find Micro before Frank does. We don't know what he'd do to him, and even if he doesn't hurt him, he could still easily intimidate him out of doing anything besides grabbing his family and fleeing the city."
Matt and Karen nodded together. "I'll start looking for him," he said.
"I can do a little more research on this city," said Karen. "Maybe I'll find some possible locations."
So of course Matt went out that night, and as soon as they'd finished the tacos too. Karen offered to stay, but Foggy was pretty sure she was going to nap anyway, then finish the day's work. "I've got enough here I might just still be working when he gets back," she noted.
Except her nap didn't last as long as she would've liked. Foggy was beset by restless dreams, mixing gunshots and soundclips of Ross with images of Wanda looking frightened, then beaten and bloody, much the way Matt often was when he limped home-and then, oddly enough, of Jennifer lying injured and near death. It wasn't even an hour before she started awake, and knew within a few minutes she wasn't getting back to sleep. And then, just to frustrate her more, she found herself struggling to concentrate on her work, her mind stubbornly clinging onto Matt out in the darkness.
It was nearly dawn when Matt returned to find her pressing her head down on the desk, doing too little of anything at all. He didn't say anything at all at first, just leaned down and ran his hands soothingly down the back of her neck and shoulders, before pressing hard against the knot that had formed in one of her shoulder blades. Foggy let herself relax, closing her eyes, not holding back the groan of pain fading into pleasure.
He made sure the knot was completely gone, before he said, "I found Lieberman. His hide-out was right by the water, and had enough computers I could hear them from the bridge."
Foggy shot upward, all her tension coming straight back. "That sounds more like a crazy man to me. What the hell is he up to? Is he planning to kill anyone?"
"I might get him to avoid that part. In fact, I think he wasn't at all unhappy that I found him. He wanted help from Frank, but it's possible we can give that to him without Frank getting involved. Especially since his priority is being able to go home safely. The problem is, not only does he know too much for that, but we don't even know how many people want him dead because of it-and what we do know is Wolf's not even the highest-ranked of them."
"And what exactly does he know?" asked Foggy. "And how much pain is it going to cause poor Karen if she has to hear about it?"
"At least some, even if maybe it won't surprise her too much," said Matt grimly. "Frank's squad was commandeered by the CIA to torture and kill people. Commanded to commit war crimes, and they all of them committed them. They were told Congress had approved, which apparently was enough for them to do it, but that wasn't even true. And someone recorded them doing it, beating and then shooting a man who claimed he wasn't a terrorist...Leiberman played me the video, and I could only hear his voice, of course, but..." Matt had to paused them, the impact of it clearly still with him. "It left both of us convinced he'd done nothing wrong."
The horrificness of it all was too much for Foggy for a moment, and she couldn't help but say, "I really wish now we'd never taken him as a client."
Matt looked like he wanted to argue, but knew better. "Lieberman didn't quite tell me how he got hold of the video, and he did say he doesn't know whose hands it passed through before it reached him. He first tried to pass it on to this Homeland Security agent the victim worked with-and he's since hacked into enough stuff to be dead certain she didn't know-and he tried to cover his tracks but, well, it seems he didn't do good enough a job of it."
"What about the agent?" Foggy asked. "If they know she's received the video..."
"She's still alive right now," said Matt, "and from what he can gather, she's still in Afghanistan, hasn't managed to do anything about it yet, and they're trying to find an excuse to pull her out. She's a resident of New York City, so if they succeed, we could add her to the list of people to potentially talk to."
"You want to trust a Homeland Security agent? Even if she wasn't involved in what happened with her partner, even if she genuinely liked him...well, you know what Karen will say."
"I think we know what she's going to say for a lot of things. But she's still in Afghanistan right now, anyway, and we can't do anything to help her there. Even if we could get in contact with the Avengers, and they were willing to do something, I'm not sure they could."
Foggy kind of wished they could at the moment, though. She supposed it was a little dicey, the general statement it would make if the higher-profile heroes gone rogue were the ones exposing governmental corruption, but the spiteful, angry part of her wanted it anyway. Besides, it would probably make their own job easier.
Except Matt was continuing: "Although that amount of access that guy has to information is kind of scary. If they send any communications possibly related to doing anything to her, he could try to hinder them. And a guy who can set up cameras in his own house and keep them running for months without his wife and kids having any idea as yet..."
"They don't know he's alive, then," Foggy interrupted, because that suddenly became something she wanted to have confirmed.
Here, Matt knew what she could say to that. "Foggy," he said, "you can't deny it's safer for them that way. The way Lieberman described all three of them, there'd almost certainly be at least one of them that just would not sit still, and the minute they take action, or even accidentally let slip his still being alive to the wrong person, all three of them become hopelessly easy targets."
"True," Foggy said, and he hoped her read her hammering heart as her not believing that, but just not being willing to argue with him over it at the moment. And that this was the reason she then said, "So who goes to have the word with Wolf? Does anyone?"
"I don't know how much he has that Lieberman didn't," said Matt. "And he even said he'd find out what he can about how those emails got leaked. We might find reason to risk it eventually, or even not long from now, but..."
"Try to do everything sneakily first?" Foggy did approve of that idea. Doing things sneakily first did reduce the amount of violence a little bit. "Or maybe just let the professional investigators do things sneakily first?"
"I've talked to Jessica about it already. She seemed rather unimpressed with the lot of us, but said she'd try to find a few more names for us, at least."
"Good," said Foggy. "Now, tell me you can sleep for at least a handful of hours before you need to be anywhere." He was at least tired enough he would; she could tell that much.
When he nodded, head nearly shaking up and down, Foggy let herself have a deep breath, hoping Matt would chalk that up to her bringing herself down from the night's news. Then, without any further words, she linked their arms together and led him into the bedroom. She helped him strip down to leggings, and even the climb into the bed. This was something she did sometimes, though usually when he was so tired he was nearly falling over. She had to hope he was too tired to wonder why she was doing it now.
If he did, he didn't ask. Foggy kissed him under his eyes as they fell shut, then went to shower and change into fresh clothes. He was fast asleep by the time she was done, having succeeded in saying no more words to him that could've helped tip him off to the fact that she was about to go somewhere other than just directly to the office.
The Lieberman home was located in a pretty nice part of Queens, and far enough a walk away from the Metro that Foggy had plenty of opportunities to glance over her shoulder. Maybe even more so because it wasn't even just their foes she was worried about.
Sarah Lieberman worked as a nurse, and when Foggy walked up to her door, she didn't even know if she'd be there; she had no idea of her schedule. She had to come after the kids had gone off to school, though. She wasn't so much of an idiot as to try this when the two kids were around.
As she approached the front door, she tried to look for the cameras without giving away that she was doing so. She didn't spot anything. It was also hard to keep a straight face, knowing that in all probability, David "Micro" Lieberman was sitting in front of one of his multiple computers watching her, all paranoid and thinking she was there to do who-knows-what. And yet she suspected none of his guesses about her purpose would be the right one.
Foggy had to really hope Mrs. Lieberman was home, or, at the very least, she would be home the first time she came back here. Lieberman saw her here three times, he'd probably take some sort of very possibly disastrous action.
But she ended up not having to worry about any of that. Half a minute after she'd rapped on the door twice, it was answered by a weary-looking woman who asked if she could help her in an all too distracted tone.
"Hello, my name is Annabelle Sharpe," Foggy started, keeping her voice remarkably steady considering that she usually didn't do this particular kind of lying, "and I'm here to settle a dispute between a couple of your neighbors over their properties and what belongs to who. Don't worry, it doesn't involve you, but we would like your aid in establishing exactly where your own property ends and the Pallems' to the right begins."
"Oh, sure, of course. I've got the papers for that in...in the office. Just give me a second." Foggy was glad to. It gave her a chance to glance idly around and try to further surmise exactly where the cameras were. They had to be less likely to be near the street, where there was far more chance of a passerby accidentally stumbling on them. This plan probably wouldn't get them fully out of sight of their lenses, but they could stand at the front right corner for at least a few minutes and talk quietly without raising suspicion, and hopefully they'd be far away enough for their words to not be picked up.
She came back with the papers, and led Foggy over to where the border between the properties was largely delineated by fences, "but it doesn't quite go all the way; we didn't want to the fence to be that long, and with the cost being measured per-"
Softly, just loud enough to cut off her babbling, Foggy said, "Your husband's alive."
"WHAT?" And she nearly ruined it with her reaction; she would've yelled more had Foggy not grabbed her shoulder and hastily shushed her.
"Also," she hissed, "he's got cameras set up all around here, so we need to keep our voices down. And my name's not Annabelle Sharpe, it's Foggy Nelson; I had to give a fake name because he might've recognized my real one. My husband's in contact with him, and they both think it's safer for you and your children to not know about any of this, but..."
"Oh, bullshit!" Mrs. Lieberman slapped her away, and then turned and started storming back towards the house.
There was no way to avoid suspicion now, so Foggy hastily followed her with a, "Look, I know it sounds absurd..."
"It would if it were anyone else," Mrs. Lieberman replied, without breaking pace, "but as it happens I can find out for myself if you're telling the truth quickly enough."
She was walking too fast for Foggy to quite catch up. Technically, she ended up slamming the front door in her face, though that was simply because she wasn't paying attention to Foggy being right behind her. Foggy pulled it back open to no protest. Mrs. Lieberman was too busy striding into her kitchen, saying, "If he's really set up the cameras there's no way one won't be in..." She flung the door to the furthest cabinet open, and Foggy saw her remove a pack of flour and some smaller packets, before breathlessly exclaiming, "Well!"
Foggy joined her in front of the now exposed camera. It was small and far back enough that only a tiny red light made it easy to spot. She glanced at the cabinet doors, and spotted the tiny hole in one of them; she might not have if she hadn't been looking for it.
"You do realize," she said, "I was hoping to tell you this without him finding out."
"Well, fuck that," Mrs. Lieberman retorted, still staring straight in the camera. "And fuck you, David! Now unless you want me to tear this city apart and probably get myself arrested for disturbing the peace, you are either going to come right here or you are going to contact me right now and tell me where the hell you are!"