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knights_say_nihThis is my whacked out form of Criminology studying. When I feel too guilty to take a break and too bored to breathe.
So you have it. A snippet-formed fanfic from The Usual Suspects for EVERY SINGLE FUCKING CONCEPT I have to do for my midterm this week, done very nearly from memory, thank you very much.
It sounds boring, but I think it might be a cool fic, actually. It's slash, because that's still how I roll, and probably hard R.
“According to Sheldon’s sematotypes,” was one of the first things McManus had ever said to Keaton, “the mesomorph is the most likely kind of person to have committed a crime. The Gleuck’s study, in the fifties, essentially confirmed this. Though it’s argued that it disregards the tendancy of prisoners to lift weights, and doesn’t allow for differential adjudication. Is that what you’re convicting me based on? Because I sure as fuck haven’t seen any other evidence.”
That had been when McManus was arrested for the second time, way back when, when he was still a smart mouthed young punk type and Keaton was the one not sitting in a chair.
“We’ve got our self a smartass,” said his partner, snidely, and Keaton doesn’t remember what his name was nowadays but he’d met with an unfortunate accident about three months after this, “a real brainiac.”
“Midterm’s next Thursday,” explained McManus cheerfully, blue eyes and sandy hair and laughter, “think I’ll be out by then?”
The charge was hijacking, and he was guilty as sin, so no, he wasn’t. That was the end of McManus’s college career. Keaton thinks McManus probably blames him for this on some level but has never asked. In fact, he isn’t even entirely sure what it was McManus was studying.
~~~~
“Look,” says McManus to the public defender, who’s all he can afford, “I know for a fact that they haven’t established actus rea.”
The defender is plainly stunned he knows the word.
“Actus rea, mens real, lack of legal defence or justification, and a criminal law to be contrary to.”
It makes sense in principle, but he’s going down for it anyways, legal construct or not. The detectives are a little smarter than McManus gives them credit for, and McManus is a little too cocky to win sympathy with anyone.
~~~~
Two years later they meet in a bar and McManus isn’t quite as sunny. He hasn’t shaved in a while, and it occurs to Keaton for the first time that it’s pretty fucking awe inspiring that a college kid managed to pull off what this one had with that truck. That that sort of thing took practise and he wasn’t nearly old enough...
“Kids these days,” mutters Keaton, and McManus recognizes him as the cop (that cop) and slides onto the bar stool next to him.
“I fucking owe you a punch” he growls, and Keaton considers this, and shakes his head.
“Not me, boyo. You’re looking for my partner.”
McManus considers this. Attempts to remember the exact details of the little interrogation room, of who did what to who and how much it hurt and exactly whose fist that was. He seems to accept what Keaton’s saying, which is a shame, because it’s a lie. It was him that gave him the black eye.
“Any idea where he drinks these days?”
Keaton snorts. The man’s dead. McManus is just sharp enough to pick up on this. And on a few other things, too.
“You know, Merton said there were five models of social adaptation.”
“Do I give a shit?”
Does McManus?
“Conformity, Innovation, Ritualism, Retreatism and Rebellion. Guess which one’s most likely to be a criminal?”
Keaton gives him a bland look. Whether it’s because the question’s stupid because it’s obvious, or stupid because he continues to not give a shit, McManus can’t tell, but he pushes on anyways.
“The Innovator. Because he accepts the cultural goals but rejects the institutionalized means of getting them. You an innovator, Mr Police-Man?”
“It’s Detective,” snaps Keaton, and realizes that that’s funny that he’s bringing it up, considering how little the title means. Rejecting institutionalized means indeed.
While he considers this, McManus leaves.
~~~~
Enrico Ferri, arguably one of the three most influential thinkers in the positivist school of Criminology, said that free will did not exist. That man operated on a day to day basis being influenced by varying social pressures, and we are all decided by what we experience.
McManus, when he sees Keaton walking down the street two months after meeting him in the bar, in a clean pressed suit and glasses, looking ready for a fight, knows this is not true. It takes every bit of strength he has to turn around and walk away. If that isn’t exercising his free will, he doesn’t know what is.
And what did Enrico Ferri know anyways? He was one of Mussolini’s cabinet members, for fucks sake. Cocksucker backed the wrong horse, bigtime.
~~~~
They run into each other at the same fence. While they’re sitting in the basement of the dingy club, waiting for someone else to get out of there and finish business, they look at each other.
Third time’s a charm, thinks Keaton, though he’s not sure exactly what he’s supposed to be charming here, and because he doesn’t know about that day McManus saw him in the street. They watch each other, and it’s a game of who’s going to talk first.
“You’ve lost your blues,” observes McManus, and while Keaton knows he could just say he was under cover or something, he doesn’t really see the point. Denying it would lend it validity, so instead he asks,
“What, no interesting details to regale me with today?”
He really, really should have known that McManus would consider this a challenge.
“In Gottfredson and Hirschi’s co-published paper, they list six features of basic criminality. One, immediate gratification, obviously false or we would not be sitting here. Two, easy gratification, again obviously false or I wouldn’t have had a bullet pulled out of my shoulder last week. Three, the adrenaline rush of it, which I’m prepared to grant them. Four, a lack of long term benefit, needing constant renewal, escalating crime levels, which really just depends how good you are. Five, little skill or planning required, and again, this is case by case. And last but not least, the pain and suffering caused to the victim. Which kind of has to make you wonder about Gottfredson and Hirschi, but hey, whatever floats your boat, baby.”
The door opens, opens, the Columbian with the oily smile and the brief case comes out.
“And does a little pain and suffering float your boat, as you say, Mr McManus?”
McManus shrugs, looking singularly unimpressed.
Keaton leans in, and leers, and whispers, “shame,” and is immediately and easily gratified by the shock on McManus’s face, and that was just easy as pie.
~~~
It had to happen eventually, that they both tried for the same thing, and when they meet in the parking garage they both know it immediately.
“Did you know crime has been reduced to an equasion?” asks McManus, and Keaton blinks,
“O equals f bracket V P T S close bracket. Opportunity, victim, place, time, specific situation.”
Keaton thinks about this, and fingers the trigger of his gun.
“And the ‘f?’”
“Fucked if I can remember.”
He only catches the ‘fuck,’ since the butt of Fenster’s gun comes down hard on the back of his head. He wakes up in a cheap hotel room hours later wearing lipstick, and the truck he’d been trying for is gone. It could, on reflection, have been worse.
~~~
While Keaton is in Attica he gets a letter. It says it’s from a Muriel Hessop but he doesn’t buy that for one second.
Dear Dean,
I’m taking care of your cat for you while you’re away. Johnny from across the street will be watering your plants on the front step.
Did you know there are three kinds of what is termed ‘deterrence?’ The first is the least effective. Specific deterrence is when a person is caught and punished, and though you’d think this would make sense, there’s a 70% re-offence rate in America today. The second is general deterrence, where the public sees the consequence of another person breaking the law. I’ll tell you how that goes for me. The third is situational deterrence. That is where there is an immediate reason not to commit a crime, for example, the likelihood of being caught.
Tsk tsk.
Muriel.
He wonders how the fuck this got let in. Maybe the guards thought he’d learn something from it. It’s actually funny, in its own way.
~~~
Keaton fucks him practically poetically, all braced elbows and easy movements, pinning him and rolling against him with his hips in this inexorable way that’s got McManus thinking of oceans, guitar music, plants growing, and ending up back in jail in a few months time. Nothing stops these things from happening. McManus squirms and shivers and writhes and generally makes a display and mess of himself in a way that’s a little less like the ocean and a little more like explosions of confetti, fireworks going off, ants crawling every which way and balls of yarn unravelling all at once. McManus thinks of sex in very weird terms. He’s always been a little bit crazy.
“Jeremy,” and is McManus saying someone else’s name during sex? Is the lunatic hijacker sweet on someone? Is he suffering short term memory loss?
“It’s Keaton, actually, but since you’re taking it up the ass you can call me Dean just this once.”
He can’t be sure, but he thinks McManus rolls his eyes.
“Jeremy Bentham, hedonistic calculus,” he gasps, and Keaton bites his ear before he can go off on one of his things, which shuts him up nice and fast.
~~~
Keaton is fairly sure he should have had some sort of major crisis after getting drunk and fucking some street punk hijacker, but then, stranger things have and will happen. After all, it had been a long time in jail, and in there his options weren’t exactly stellar.
Besides, McManus explains it to him in what he’s learning is a very clear language, about a month later when they meet in a bar again, by chance (if you can call Keaton asking around chance.)
“Cornish and Clarke, 1986,” is what he says, as the bartender pours them both their whiskey, “Crime meets common place needs. The Reasoning Criminal weighs potential cost versus potential gain.”
“Where the fuck does this shit come from?” asks Keaton, a few rounds later, accent thicker in his voice than before, hand on the back of McManus’s neck.
“First stint in lockup,” admits McManus, only slurring a little, “had my textbook with me. Not a lot to do, truth be told. Not a lot to do.”
~~~
McManus hears Keaton is dead.
There are two kinds of wrongs. There are wrongs that are mala prohibita, which means wrong because they are against the law. Laws are a reflection of the values of the law makers, ie, elected legislators, defined by the process that surrounds them. McManus doesn’t like the idea of a bunch of old dead white men deciding what to do.
The other kind of wrong is called mala in se, which means wrong in and of itself.
Dean Keaton should not be dead.
~~~
While he is seeing Edie, Keaton goes through her papers once and a while, and try to spot Sacco & Kennedy or Hirschi & whatshisname.
Once they get talking, and she mentions trajectories and transitions, and he recites off the cuff,
“Trajectories are life pathways that you enter onto, and transitions are when you switch from one to the other, Sampson and Laub.”
Edie goes starry eyed.
~~~
The line up happens. Keaton hears McManus mutter something about mesomorphs as the men, most of them broad across the shoulder, file in. Hears him call Hockney a fucking endomorph and knows what it means, which sort of scares him in a big way.
“You know, there’s nothing unique about criminal behaviour, cocksucker,” he hears as he’s being shoved through a hallway later that night, “Conformity is merely a side effect of socialization...” and he’s scared how easily he remembers.
~~~
They’re all sitting, lying, resting together and Keaton waits for McManus to start on one of his things, but the closest he gets is a cool ‘I’d like to exercise my right to free assembly’ (and of course the fucker practically knows the whole criminal code too) and also ‘I’d heard you were dead.’
McManus has absolutely no right to be annoyed, and knows it, so he isn’t for long.
Walter Reckless, in his containment theory, described the criminal thought process as such. Inner containment is self control, the discipline that keeps you from slipping and breaking the law. That’s what’s keeping McManus right now from punching Keaton in his fucking disinterested face. Inner pushes are restlessness, anger, frustration, and that’s why he tells them about the plan. To get a bit of their fucking own back after this.
Outer containment, that’s what Keaton has, that’s your social structure, life, family, your lawyer girlfriend who’ll be so fucking disappointed if you slip. Outer pushes, and that’s what McManus is, the guy you fucked that once in the bar and hit that once and who hit you back and who you sort of hate and sort of still want to screw who looks at you from across the street like ‘you know you’re fucking going to so don’t even pretend, blue eyes.’
Keaton sees the look, and remembers that once or twice when he was drunk, McManus called him blue-eyes.
~~~
Verbal wants to be the one to go see Keaton. Hockney doesn’t trust him. No one understands what the fuck Fenster has to say on the subject. McManus mutters something about Gottfredson being an idiot because crime clearly can have all the aspects of a career. He doesn’t think Verbal listens. But Verbal’s a fucking idiot and a cripple, and he brings Dean Keaton back with him so McManus doesn’t care.
~~~
Verbal, now that McManus thinks about it, hand on the inside of Keaton’s thigh on the airplane with a blanket over top of it so that no one can see unless they’re looking, is clearly suffering from anomie. Important criminological concept.
And then Keaton takes a whistling little breath between his teeth and shoves McManus’s hand away, which is a real shame because you hear things about the mile high club and you always wonder...
~~~
Hirschi and Hindelang said in 1977 that low IQ has a profound effect on crime. Now McManus knows this is bullshit, because look at Keaton. Look at Fenster. Look at Verbal. Okay, gloss over Hockney. And now look at this stupid fucking jewler who’s running around with millions of dollars in a briefcase that he won’t give up until Verbal shoots him in the fucking head.
Stupid cocksucker. Cocksuckers. Hirschi, Hindelang, Saul. All of them.
~~~
“Kaiser Soze sounds like he is to organized crime what Cesare Beccaria was to the classical school of criminologists,” observes McManus quietly into Keaton’s ear after he’s yelled and screamed himself out, shot at a few birds and generally pissed everyone off. Keaton had hit him for it. He supposes he deserved it.
Now Kobayashi is gone, everyone’s asleep, and it’s just the two of them up.
The joke is lame, and the parallels don’t hold up and it’s mostly just for old time’s sake when they were sitting on bar stools and the most important question was ‘who’s buying the next round.’
It’s enough.
They stagger into Keaton’s room and fuck on the floor so the headboard doesn’t smash against the wall because McManus isn’t sure he wants the fag jokes this time around and because Keaton’s never been afraid of a little rug burn. They don’t end up all that naked anyways, and Keaton wrestles him so McManus is on the ground underneath him and then it’s just sticky thrusting and groans stifled by fabric between teeth, harsh breaths and then eventually sighs.
Nothing like with Edie.
~~~
Felson has ten fallacies about crime. McManus isn’t going to list them all, but he wants to add one. The ‘glamour’ fallacy. Because nothing feels as unglamorous as kneeling in the sand burying your partner of how many odd years now?
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck.
~~~~
“In his book ‘the Delinquent Boys semi colon the culture of the gang,’ written in 1955, Albert Cohen proposes his status deprivation theory.”
“Shut the fuck up, McManus,” snarls Keaton and McManus continues and pretends he isn’t stung.
“He says that it is a product of differential association; that exposure to other gang members creates a group of lower class males who are non-utilitarian, isn’t that beautiful? Also, malicious, negativistic. They can’t measure up to the ‘middle class measuring rod.’”
“Shut the fuck up, McManus. And get ready.”
“What does the middle class measuring rod sound like to you, Keaton? As a certified lawyer’s wife?”
The radio goes dead. McManus starts getting ready. He doesn’t add that this is added to by the continuation of the intelligence and crime hypothesis: school failure frustration, susceptibility and impulsiveness, differential arrest, differential adjudication and differential disposition.
Keaton’s busy.
~~~
The knife goes in and McManus’s life flashes before his eyes.
The cure for crime, he once was told, came in two parts. Crime caused by low self control could be cured by adequate child rearing. Crime caused by ineffective socialization could be cured by monitoring and disciplining people while they were still young enough for such socialization to be effective.
Apparently, a knife in the back of the neck will do it for you too.
~~~
Keaton has to watch McManus die.
Criminology is the study of crime. McManus’s blood spills all over the deck of the boat.
Criminology is the study of law. Well, he doesn’t have anything going for him to contribute to that.
Criminology is the study of victimization. And it never occurred to him that McManus could be a victim, but here he is, looking obscenely young, and dead.
Criminology is the study of punishment. Dear Verbal, or Kaiser, as he’s called nowadays, at least has the decency to shoot Keaton in the head before he blows the boat. That at least was good of him.
In retrospect, McManus should probably have stuck with school. Done the law thing. It certainly can’t have turned out much worse than it did.
Though on the other hand, he never did care much for middle class measuring rods. And if he had to read one more page of Sacco and Kennedy he’d have had to track those cocksuckers down and done something really, really fucking drastic.
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no subject
Date: 2007-10-22 07:28 am (UTC)I just wish I had the time to do something half as awesome with my Thucydides reading for tomorrow. (Of course, there's always next week's Greek Art midterm...)
You've clearly discovered the ultimate way to procrastinate from studying without really procrastinating. I salute you.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-22 07:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-22 11:57 am (UTC)Also? I now want to app Verbal all over again. And Keaton/McManus FTW! They are scarily hot and complex together, at least the way you write them. :)
no subject
Date: 2007-10-22 07:46 pm (UTC)I see them every time I watch the film. There's just. So much touching. Always, with Keaton's hand on McManus or grabbing and then the scene in the boat where they're both so angry they're practically nose to nose...
no subject
Date: 2007-10-23 01:46 pm (UTC)Guh! I do recall the grabbing and the touching and all the getting up in each others' face stuff, now you mention it. Their love is the angryYAY! *pokes you to write more fanfic for them* Although I know you're mad busy and everything but you seriously do get them so well and I've never seen any other US fic anywhere so I love it! It is so my...second favourite film ever.