15 – The Use of A Tourniquet Is Not Advised

Holden tried his best to puzzle this out in his mind, but there was more than one thing going on. There simply had to be.

“You blackmailed your own nephew,” he said aloud.

John stared at him like he was insane. “What?”

“Over Kyle’s sex tape. You blackmailed him, and decided to go after your brother -”

“That’s not what fucking happened!” he roared, his anger genuine. “Joel bought the fucking thing!”

Holden wondered if this was true. Then he wondered why he doubted it. This was so fucked up it was incredible. “He bought up his son’s sex tape?”

“Yes. Someone approached him, said they’d release it on the web if he didn’t pay them. I thought you couldn’t trust the bastard, but Joel wanted the tapes destroyed and the whole thing put behind them, so he paid up.”

“Who was the guy?”

“How the fuck should I know? Supposedly a … participant, but I don’t know. I stayed out of it.”

“’Cause it was icky?”

John grimaced and looked away. “I didn’t need to know this shit, okay? Not my business.”

“Was the participant’s name Colt?”

“What kinda name is Colt?”

“A porn name.”

He shook his head like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, and kind of hoped he’d never have to hear it again. “I don’t know shit about the tape, except Joel said he took care of it.”

“How soon before his death?”

The question seemed to catch him off guard. “What?”

“What I said.”

He had to  think about it. “A week, maybe? Two?”

“Kyle knew about it?”

He shrugged helplessly. “How the fuck do I know?”

“So Joel paid blackmail money on Kyle’s sex tape, and then you decided to blackmail him too, since he was such an easy mark?”

“What kind of scumbag do you think I am?”

“A huge one.”

“Fuck you.”

“How fucked up is your family?” Holden shot back. “Why would Joel, of anyone, want to help keep his own son in the closet?”

“Because the Ashers have money coming out the ass, and he’s good friends with Evangeline Asher and didn’t want to humiliate her.”

“Good friends.” Holden figured that meant he was fucking her, used to fuck her, or wanted to fuck her. Joel was a predictable horndog. There was also the possibility that if Kyle’s secret came out, some of Joel’s might as well. “This is fucked up.”

“Tell me about it.”

Holden decided that the answer laid – no pun intended – with Colt Brixton. Duane Malloy was probably a skeezy bastard, but he could wait. He needed to talk to Colt now. “You want to live, John?”

He scowled at him. “Is that a trick question? Fuck yeah.”

“Fine. Then this never happened. You report me to the cops, I’ll be sure to tell them all about Joel, and all about you.”

“What d’ya mean all about me?”

“Brothers sharing a hustler. It’ll make the top of the new cycle for weeks. You can’t buy that kind of salaciousness.”

His eyes almost bugged out of his head, and a vein throbbed visibly in his neck. “What the fuck ..? I’m not gay! I’ve never hired you!”

“I know. But who cares about truth when a lie is so good? It’s what you call it … truthiness. You could get the Pope to swear it never happened, but it won’t matter. You’ll forever be known as that guy who hired his brother’s hustler. You will never live it down.” Holden opened  the passenger door, and half in and half out of the car, he looked at the sweating, bleeding John and gave him a deeply insincere smile. “Makes holding a gun on you seem like nothing, huh?”

“You motherfucker,” he snarled, but he looked away, his shoulders slumping. Holden knew he wasn’t going to do a damn thing. The thought that Holden would lie and paint him as a closet fag was just too much for him to bear. Pussy.

At least they weren’t too far from the casino. Its huge, garish neon sign lit up its corner of the sky like a spotlight. It was an ugly place, as gaudy and cheap as a ten dollar hooker, and he couldn’t fathom who would spend all their time in there, wasting all their money. But he felt the same way about cocaine, and that certainly had a fan club.

Walking along the road, he pulled out his cell phone and punched up a familiar number. “Julian, it’s Fox. I need you to work some pimp magic and find a hustler for me. He works porn out of Champion in Portland, goes by the name of Colt Brixton. Ideally I need a place to find him, or a personal phone number. I need this ASAP.” He hung up without saying goodbye, as he’d gotten his machine. But you always got Julian’s machine. Did he ever answer his fucking phone?

Holden decided to call Ahmed and see if he was in the mood for a road trip. Julian would call back eventually, and he wanted to be ready.

Julian didn’t disappoint, it just took him a while.

He called back around four thirty in the morning, clearly wasted, and said several things that were completely unintelligible. But eventually he spit out what sounded like an address, and a grudge. (The words Holden was able to make out were “fucker”, “stash”, “me”, “light”, “butt” and “fluffer”. He couldn’t put them into a coherent sentence, though.) By the time the call came through, he was crashing on Ahmed’s couch, which was – of course – black leather. A leather queen was going to have a leather sofa.

He told Ahmed what was going on, but Ahmed had been smoking his evening joint at the time (he liked to say some people had a beer to relax after work, but Ahmed – musician, guerrilla journalist, and social worker – preferred to have a joint. Fair enough; Holden begrudged no one their vices, especially since his income depended on at least one) and didn’t really follow it. Holden tried again, but Ahmed just waved his hand dismissively, and said, “I’m thinking it’s probably best I don’t know all the details. Now, who wants a grilled cheese sandwich?”

To be fair, Ahmed made great grilled cheese sandwiches.

While Holden took the time to catch some sleep, Ahmed remained up, in spite of the joint, and after Julian called they piled into his vintage Mustang Charger and started driving to Portland. Ahmed had been working the late shift lately, and was keyed up, as he said his body clock now told him he couldn’t sleep until the sun was up. He was becoming a vampire – or, as he preferred, a Blacula. Being both a leather queen and a few inches shy of seven feet tall, Ahmed was naturally intimidating, but he was amazingly laid back and had a goofy sense of humor that Holden imagined Roan would love. They would probably get along great, come to think of it, but they only met once, and not under the best of circumstances. Ahmed would probably love Roan’s vintage muscle cars.

Ahmed had made lots of road trips down South, so he knew several short cuts and ways around the heavier traffic areas, but still Holden ended up dozing for about half the trip. It was well into morning when they reached Portland, but it was hard to tell because it was gray and raining, the sun hiding behind a cloud layer as thick as sheep’s wool.

Holden thought about calling Dylan or Dee when they stopped at a gas station to have a piss and get directions, but he ultimately decided against it. What if they told him Roan was dead? It was unlikely, but still possible. Could he handle that? He didn’t think he could, so he decided to operate in ignorance for now. Besides, if he found out Roan was dead before he met Colt, he might just beat the shit out of him, and how did you get information out of a guy with a broken jaw?

They got a bit turned around, but after about forty minutes they found Colt’s apartment building. It was a shitty little brick building in what looked to be a seedier part of town, and for some reason, it called itself Lincoln Towers, even though there was just the one building (why the plural “Towers”? Did there used to be another one?) and it was only, at most, about six floors high. Hardly a tower.

Colt was in a ground floor apartment, 5-A, and Ahmed offered to go in with him, but Holden managed to convince him to wait in the car. Being a social worker who was part of a mental health “crisis team”, he was accustomed to defusing tense situations and being so fucking bloody reasonable that it was almost impossible to bully and intimidate someone with him there. Oh sure, he could intimidate with his size alone, but once he started talking, he revealed his soft marshmallowy center and pretty much blew the deal. Holden wanted to get in this guy’s face, and he didn’t need Ahmed hanging around being reasonable.

The interior of the apartment building was exactly what Holden expected: poorly lit, reeking of piss, vomit, and stale malt liquor. Dimly through doors he heard crying babies, loud televisions, louder music, some shouting in a language he didn’t recognize. Holden lived in a much better apartment, and his porn enterprise wasn’t really off the ground yet. But then again, Holden was his own boss there, it was all internet, and he didn’t have a drug problem. Lots of the guys who got into porn and/or hustling got drug habits, but it was very chicken and egg – did they get into drugs to stand hustling, or did they hustle to get money for drugs? After doing a little research on Colt, he guessed he probably did have a drug habit. What other reason could there have been for Champion to not give him more high profile work? He was probably a minor player because he had problems that couldn’t be solved with a fluffer.

He found 5-A and knocked on the door, but as soon as his knuckles made contact with the door, it opened a couple of millimeters. Not just unlocked, but open.

Oh wow, this wasn’t good. Holden made sure he was still carrying his gun before nudging the door open and walking inside. “Hello?”

A messy apartment, it smelled like mold and boiled over soup, with an undertone of sweat. He saw some drug paraphernalia on the coffee table – glass pipes, blackened foil – and a bunch of wadded up blankets on the floor beside it.

As he inched closer, Holden realized they weren’t blankets at all. Well, there was a blanket, but it was mostly covering a body.

Terrific. This was the gift that kept on killing.