7 – Walking Spanish

Roan had little to no familiarity with organized sports, so he had no idea if the reactions of the rest of the Falcons was par for the course. But if it was, he missed out on having teammates.

Tank noticed they’d been gone for a bit and needed to piss anyways (those pink confetti daiquiris catching up with him), so he came in shortly after Roan had put in a call to 9-1-1 to report that he’d been almost stabbed, but had his assailant pinned down in the bathroom of Panic. To say the dispatcher wasn’t sure how to handle that was an understatement. As soon as Tank saw Grey holding a bleeding guy pinned to the wall, he opened the door and shouted in his hockey voice – the one that carried across a rink to his teammates when the crowd was loud and the music was booming – “Avant!”

Grey explained later that that was a kind of a code. It was a bit of French that everyone knew, meaning “before” or “forward”, but Tank used that to call in defensemen. Not all the Falcons on the pub crawl were defensemen (Jeff and Zach were wingers, whatever that meant precisely, Sandy was a center, and of course Tank was the goalie), but within seconds they all crowded the men’s room, ready for a fight. Save for Zach, who was a little too drunk to respond so rapidly.

Grey explained the situation while the guys crowded around the assailant, giving him the stink eye, and Roan almost felt bad for the guy, especially since Grey let up on him so he could get a good look at how totally fucking screwed he was, surrounded by big, angry men. Of all the nights to try and attack him, he had to do it on the one night he was doing the town with half a hockey team. That was the definition of bad timing. Or karma, perhaps, depending on your perspective.

Dylan followed them in too, and was shocked that someone would try for Roan at his place of work. Roan tried to get the guy to talk, but he wouldn’t. Grey and the guys offered to “make him talk” (how ominous did that sound?) but luckily the cops had arrived by then. Also luckily, he knew the cops who showed up, Parker and Kinney, and they didn’t seem the least bit surprised to find him with a group of guys in the men’s room. When they discovered the guys with him were part of the Seattle Falcons, Parker started laughing, and didn’t stop until he was crying. Finally he got a hold of himself, and slapped the cuffs on the guy, telling him, “You hafta be the stupidest guy I’ve arrested this week. And I get all the stupid ones, so that’s something.”

The guy still wasn’t talking. When asked his name, why he wanted to attack Roan, he only said, “I wanna lawyer.”

“Of course you want a lawyer,” Parker replied. “You guys always want lawyers.”

As the cops led him out, the club members applauded them. But when he and the guys came out of the men’s room, they were greeted with applause and wild cheers. Drunk Zach raised his arms and let out an explosive, “Wooo!” He then casually leaned over, vomited behind a table, and then half staggered, half collapsed against the bar. “Woo,” he added anemically. “Fuck I’m tired.”

Jeff grabbed him under the shoulders, propping him up with a single arm (how strong was Jeff? That was a bit unexpected). “Lightweight. You’ve just shamed Saskatchewan. But thanks, ’cause I won the pool.”

Grey pulled out a small clump of bills and tossed it on the bar. “Sorry for the clean up,” he told Luis as he gathered the money.

Luis scanned the bills, and replied, “Honey, you tip like this, you can puke on our floors any time.”

“I’m not a lightweight,” Zach argued belatedly. “I haven’t shamed Skacth .. Suchcutch …home.”

“I told him not to order the Tie Me To The Bedpost,” Dylan said. That was the name of the drink Zach ordered in the girlie drink contest. According to Dylan, it had rum, vodka, and Midori in it, which sounded disgusting, and could fuck you up pretty fast. Zach may have been living proof of that.

“He shoulda went with the Royal Fuck,” Tank added.

Sadly, that was a drink too. Roan didn’t even want to know what was in that.

In spite of the fact that it seemed like the night had ended on a sour note, the guys were eager to do it again sometime soon. Roan happily agreed, as he had had fun. Dylan gave him a look, the kind of look only a person who loved you could give you. It said, without words, “You’re fucking crazy.” And yes, he understood he was. After dropping off Grey, Scott, and Tank at Grey’s and Scott’s place, Dylan said it out loud: “You know, they mean well, but I think they’re all a bit nuts.”

“They play hockey. Of course they’re nuts.” After a brief pause, he admitted, “That’s probably how come we get on so well, even though we have absolutely nothing in common.”

“Except a love of trouble.”

“I don’t love it. It loves me.”

Dylan was driving since he hadn’t had any alcohol. Roan didn’t feel at all tipsy, but figured it was easier to surrender the keys than argue. “Did you recognize that guy?”

“The one who tried to attack me? No.”

“Any idea what that was about?”

He was forced to shrug. “A lot of people hate me. I couldn’t even begin to narrow down the list.”

“Shit, that’s sad.”

“Tell me about it.” What did you do about that? Public apologies, start handing out money, a little bit of both? And even then, that probably would only cut down his enemies list marginally.

He wondered if it was the church. Yeah, they’d backed off since he almost ripped that guy’s arm clean off, but they were never going to be best buddies, and some followers got overzealous. It was always the religious nutcases who were the most dangerous people: they honestly believed god was on their side, so nothing they did was wrong, even if that included massacring kindergärtners on a playdate. It’s one of the reasons he always distrusted religion as a whole. No one should ever feel that right about something, so justified in their righteousness that nothing they did was out of bounds.

No, the guy hadn’t been infected. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t in the Church of Divine Transformation. It only meant he hadn’t been infected yet.

The combination of alcohol and downers was a risky one, and by the time they got home he just decided to fall into bed. Dylan joined him, and seemed to hold him tighter than he usually did. Scared? Possibly. He even asked, as Roan was falling asleep, “Do you think Hallmark makes  a ‘Thank you for saving my boyfriend’s life from the psycho’ card? I should send one to Grey.”

“He didn’t save my life. I coulda took him.”

“You’re hard to kill, hon. You’re not invincible.”

“I know, but it wasn’t stepping in front of a bullet.” After a moment, he added, “You could probably make him a mix CD for practice.”

“I’m leaving that to you, alt rock fan.”

“Hey, they’re a hockey team. They like the harder stuff.”

In the morning, Roan checked his phone messages and email messages, and got a couple of surprises. The guy arrested last night was named Charles Crosby – the name meant nothing to him – and it turned out there was a warrant on him in California, for assault and domestic violence. So he was most likely going to take a trip across state lines, and Roan wouldn’t have to worry about it for a while. He still never said why he went after him. Email wise, Darren had responded to him with some wariness. Roan had already picked out his assumed identity from the Rutherford database: a student named Chelsea Yamamoto, a cute younger student who could have no class overlap with Darren, so there was little chance they’d met before. Pretending to be her, she talked about having seen him hanging with his friends, and how she thought he was kind of cute, but was afraid to talk to him for fear of being embarrassed. Darren responded before he got off line: he would be at Club Amsterdam tonight, in one of the VIP rooms, and she was invited to join him.

Horny bastard. It was so nice to know teen boys were the same, whether gay or straight or somewhere in between.

Club Amsterdam was a hell of a place to invite a sixteen year old girl, though. It was a strip club that tried to present itself as classy and exclusive, but really only its even more absurd prices and large building separated it from its competition. Supposedly its dancers were “screened”, but for what Roan didn’t know – STDs, dependent children, track marks, well tucked away dicks? No idea. He wasn’t looking forward to going there.

Then there was the added problem that Darren would probably have his bodyguards with him, as silly as that was. As soon as he realized he wasn’t Chelsea, he’d order then to sling him out. He needed something to tip the balance, something that would make them pause and not be so fast to act. He needed bodyguards of his own.

Well, that was a no brainer, wasn’t it?

He called Grey, who picked up almost immediately, and sounded very chipper. No hangover for him – he had the alcohol tolerance of Charles Bukowski. (Or maybe he didn’t drink that much – come to think of it, he could only remember him having three alcoholic drinks last night. Mostly he drank water.) Roan asked him how everyone else was doing, and he said everyone else was fine, save for Zach, who was greener than Shrek, but who was surprised there? Anyways, Roan told him the deal: he had to question a kid who always traveled with professional goons, ex-military bodyguards who probably mainlined steroids for breakfast and were most likely armed. He really didn’t want to get into a fight with them, all he wanted was a stalemate. Would he be interested? “Oh hell yeah,” Grey volunteered almost instantly. “Should I pick you up?”

“You know where Club Amsterdam is?”

“We took Carty there for his birthday last year.”

He had no idea who Carty was. Probably an unmet teammate. “How was it?”

“Weird. How can a strip club be arrogant?”

Roan had no answer for that. Did anyone?

He put in a call to Holden, who said he thought he had some leads, but until he tracked a solid one down he was not going to get his hopes up. Holden was being elusive for some reason, and Roan really didn’t trust it. Trying to pry it out of him turned out to be wasted time, as he claimed a client at three and begged off. Roan bet there was no client. What was that bastard up to? Yes, he was a surprisingly good investigator, but he just got stabbed going off on his own. Did he want history to repeat itself?

Before totally committing to this course, Roan tried to get in touch with the Brewsters again. No dice. He couldn’t get past the receptionist, no matter what lie he tried on. He found that Hatcher had called and left him a message. The bank had called to say that Jordan’s card had been used last night (yes, he had a credit card at his age – unbelievable), and the it was used at … Club Amsterdam. Huh. What was going on there? Roan felt better about this deception now.

Grey picked him at five thirty, when Dylan was gone – Roan hadn’t wanted to tell Dylan what he was up to. To his surprise, Tank was in the car as well. “You need at least two,”  Grey said, referring to bodyguards. “Scott woulda come, but he promised his girl he’d take her out tonight.”

“His girl?” Roan repeated. He had a girlfriend, all this time? The little slut.

“Aria,” Tank said. “Fucking hot. He gets all the hottest tail.”

“Well, he’s hot,” Grey replied. “He would.”

There was no arguing with that logic.

Club Amsterdam was far away from the part of town sometimes known as “strip row” – there were three strip clubs and ten bars within an eight mile radius of each other. It was a sad part of town. But Club Amsterdam was downtown, near the business district, trying very hard to put on airs. Which truly baffled Roan, because it was a titty bar – guys came here to see tits. How exactly did you class that up?

In the parking lot up the street from the club, he briefed Grey and Tank on everything again. It wasn’t that he thought they didn’t get it, he just didn’t want to get them hurt. He told them that the guys were ex-military and had guns, so he really didn’t want to start a fight. This was all about fight prevention. “Is that why you’re wearing a Butthole Surfers t-shirt?” Grey asked wryly.

“I just grabbed a shirt,” Roan lied. Okay, no, he didn’t. When going into aggressively heterosexual places, he always liked to wear something gay. The Butthole Surfers weren’t gay to his knowledge, but their name kind of was.

“Do you have your gun?” Grey continued, the tiniest of smirks on his face. He was wearing a Seattle Falcons t-shirt, navy blue and a little too tight, so his well-defined pecs were shown, and you got some hint of the six pack abs hiding beneath. In a sense he had dressed gay, but mostly he dressed just to show what guys who wanted to start shit with him would be getting into.

“No. I’m not getting into a gun battle in a crowded place. Even drawing a gun in such a situation is idiotic, but I wouldn’t put it past these assholes.”

“Guns are pussy weapons,” Tank proclaimed. “You wanna fight, just fight. Don’t hide behind shit like a dickless wonder.”

“Says the goalie,” Roan teased.

“Hey, he starts shit sometimes,” Grey said. “I think he has the most penalty minutes of any goalie in the league. It’s well known if you encroach on his crease he’ll send you flying. He’s the Ron Hextall of French-Canadian goaltenders.”

“I love how you say that like I know what it means,” Roan said, getting out of the car. Grey just chuckled at that. He also shucked off his jacket and left it in the car, exposing his well muscled arms, another bit of fair warning to any opponent, but really, shouldn’t the scars on Grey’s face been warning enough?

They walked into the club, which was disappointingly pedestrian: metal, neon, clear acrylic, spotlights on small stages centered around long poles, which women who were predominately blonde wrapped themselves around. There was a bar off to one side, long and wooden, with mirrors behind it reflecting light and bodies, and near the back, hidden by shadows, was a doorway. Standing in front of the doorway, which was cut off by a velvet rope, was a huge Samoan man, maybe six four and three hundred pounds, with a blue flame tattoo crawling up the side of his neck. As they neared, Grey suddenly took the lead, and said, “Hey, remember me? Grey Williams of the Seattle Falcons.”

The bouncer looked unmoved – perhaps the Britney Spears song was too loud – but then he said, “The soccer team, right?”

“Hockey. Sounders are the soccer team.”

He shook his huge head, a dismissive gesture if there ever was one.

Grey went on, regardless. “That’s Tank Beauvais, goaltender, and this is Ron Hextall, our center.”

Oh good. He was now the butt of some hockey joke, he was sure of it.

The Samoan pointed at him. “You look familiar.”

“I’m legendary,” Roan replied, deadpan. Grey was grinning at him in the spastic light, almost laughing.

Tank suddenly exclaimed something in French, his words tumbling together so fast Roan had no hope of understanding any of it. (Not that he actually spoke French.)  Grey made a calming gesture with his hand, and told the bouncer, “Tank wonders what’s up.”

Tank added something else in French emphatically, and pointed at one of the nearest dancers. “Dude, chill,” Grey said, then added, “Ce lieu suce.”

“You speak French?”

Grey shrugged. “You play hockey, you gotta speak some.”

“Darren Brewster is expecting us,” Roan added, realizing that the guys were actually doing a decent job of buffaloing this guy. He was a bit confused, and Tank’s French outbursts – which he was beginning to suspect were nonsensical and/or insulting – were making it worse.

The bouncer raised his eyebrows. “Really? He mentioned he was expecting someone … huh.”

“Is Jordan with him?” Roan added, trying to keep it casual.

“Who? Oh, you mean that skinny rich boy? Naw, I ain’t seen him in weeks.” He lifted up the velvet rope, and said, “C’mon. He’s three doors down, on the left.” As they crossed beneath the rope, the bouncer added, “What is it with hockey anyways? You skate around, you hardly score,  and it’s kinda dull, ain’t it?”

“Not from our perspective.”

“Manger moi,” Tank told him. Roan was fairly certain he just told the guy to eat him. But in French it sounded classy.

“Huh?”

“It’s not for everyone,” Roan told him, mimicking sympathy, but in all honesty he was clamping down hard on the urge to laugh.

“Guess not. I prefer football.”

Once they were in the back room, a maze of under lit corridors, Grey said, “Yeah, guys who shoot ‘roids in their ass until they’re too big to fit through a normal doorway, with their junk shrunk to the size of raisins. Sign me up for that.”

“I know you told him to eat you, Tank, but that’s the limit of my French. What else did you say?”

“I was complaining,” he admitted. “I said the place was cheap and ugly, it smelled bad, and expecting ten bucks for a soda was a joke.”

All fair points. “When you pointed at the stripper ..?”

“I said she looked like his mom.”

Grey laughed then, but tried to stifle it. “You bastard, I almost lost it then.”

Tank just smiled in a pleased, slightly unbalanced way. Again, Tank seemed like the mellowest guy in the world, but he gave off an energy that suggested that was a trap. Both he and Grey exuded the quiet confidence of men who never had to worry about anything, but Tank still had an edge to him that made him harder to read. Either he was honestly just a bit nuts, or really liked people to think that he was.

Roan led the way to the room, one door among a few, none particularly indicative of what was inside. But he could smell sweat in the air, arousal, frustration. What was that Chris Rock joke? Something about there never being sex in the champagne rooms? Well, these were the equivalent of the champagne rooms, and no, there was no sex, although there was anticipation and disappointment.

Roan opened the door without knocking, not sure what he was going to see. What he saw was a sleazy/cheesy looking lounge, with velvet sofas in a semi-circle and mirrors on the wall, and some kind of pop style R & B music blocking out the sounds of the club or any noises from the other rooms. A scantily clad brunette waitress in a gold bikini (really? Tacky ..) was serving drinks off a silver tray to Darren and his “posse”. The posse consisted of three steroided out muscleheads – one shaven headed, one with a crew cut, the last with a type of proto-mullet (he mentally dubbed them, in order, Curly, Moe, and Larry) – and a stacked blonde in a skin tight purple sheath dress who probably worked for the club. Darren was unimpressive, your average frat boy type with a soul patch and unruly dun brown hair that suggested he was vain and trying hard not to come off that way. Something in his eyes had the smug arrogance of the terminally bored, but he looked sour at their entrance. “Dudes, occupado,” he said. Wow, that just made Roan hate him more.

“I’m Chelsea Yamamoto” he told him. “You were expecting me.”

Darren’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

Larry, Moe, and Curly all stood up, and Grey and Tank took a couple steps forward, as if ready to charge them. The fact that there were three of them and that at least two of them outweighed Tank by a hundred pounds didn’t seem to phase them. Grey was physically relaxed, a total lie (no good fighter ever really tensed), and Tank seemed almost semi-conscious, save for his eyes, which seemed to eat up the room with every glance, sorting details and tossing them aside based on irrelevance. His laser like focus was impressive; he was a sniper waiting to happen.

“I’m a private detective, and I’m looking into the disappearance of Jordan Hatcher. I wanted to talk to you, but all I seemed to get was the runaround. Which I think I understand now. So why are you using his credit card, Darren? Surely your dad’s loaded.”

Darren was holding a beer bottle, which he rested on his knee as he looked at him with contempt. “What? What the fuck? Get out of here or I’ll have you removed.”

“You’re welcome to try,” Grey said casually. A threat that didn’t sound like one.

“Who are these fucks?” Darren demanded.

“I thought Jordan was your best friend. What happened?”

Darren looked confused and pissed off. “I don’t hafta talk to you. I can have you arrested.”

“And get yourself arrested? You’re seventeen. You can’t drink; you can’t legally be here. You’ll get the club shut down, and I’m sure you wouldn’t want that. Now, what did you do to Jordan?”

Belligerence flashed through his gaze, as it had never occurred to him that there was something he couldn’t do. The woman in the sheath dress suddenly looked nervous – she hadn’t known he was seventeen? Yeah, it was kind of shitty of him to put her job at risk.

“Get them out,” Darren said to the Three Stooges. He then, with almost no telegraphing, flung the beer bottle. “Fucking asshole.”

Roan saw it coming and wasn’t concerned, he knew he could duck it, but he never had a chance. Suddenly a hand snapped out and snatched the bottle out of mid air, and in almost the same motion flung the bottle back with double the force. It was Tank, showing off nearly super human reflexes of his own.

Darren saw it coming, eyes widened in horror, and attempted to scramble off the couch to avoid the bottle, but wasn’t fast enough. It shattered on his shoulder, surprising a yelp out of him. “Chickenshit motherfucker!” Tank yelled. “Get up and fight, you piece of shit dog sucker!”

Grey leaned over and whispered, “Is he an awesome goalie or what?”

Roan actually wanted to select the “or what”, but really didn’t have the time, as that’s when shit started to happen.

Moe dove for Tank, attempting a tackle, but Tank was clearly in “game” mode, ready for anything, and people just moved too slow. He stepped aside and punched Moe right in the gut, his own forward momentum making the punch that much worse. He dropped right to his knees, retching, while Tank taunted, “Stupid fucking shit licker! A two legged pig moves faster than you!” Tank then punched him in the back of the neck, sending him sprawling onto the floor.

Larry went for Grey, who simply grabbed his extended arm and twisted under it, and when he was behind Larry, he rabbit punched him right behind the ear. Larry went down like a ton of bricks, unconscious on his feet. Roan knew there was a sweet spot there, and so did Grey, apparently. Maybe that was the judo training.

Curly initially seemed to go for Roan, but stopped and reached into his coat instead, going for his weapon. Moron. Roan grabbed his arm as he started bringing it out, gun in his hand, and twisted hard. Too hard. It wasn’t just that the bones snapped, they crackled like bubble wrap, tendons tore, and Curly started turning shades of purple. He kicked, catching Roan in the leg, and it hurt enough that Roan lashed out a kick of his own in anger. And that was the mistake, as he was a little too angry.

His kick hit the man’s knee with enough force that it shifted, and his knee seemed to bend the wrong way, back to front. He collapsed, still conscious, his right arm a twisted ruin and his left leg no better, making strange, truncated keening noises somewhere between yelps and moans. His gun had fallen on the floor and he was still trying to grab it with his good hand, but Grey snatched it up and winced. “Fuck, dude, you really messed him up.”

Roan shook his head, ashamed of himself, trying to swallow back the anger, the adrenaline, the growl bubbling up from the base of his throat, the pain snaking through his lower jaw. That shouldn’t have happened; he shouldn’t have shifted so easily, with so little provocation. What the hell was that?

Moe was still face down on the floor, but his arm was reaching under his jacket. Roan pointed, and Grey took the hint. He dropped down knee first on the guy’s back, and put his hand on the back of his head, pushing his forehead to the floor. “Dude, I can knock out your front teeth, or you can just chill out and wait for this to be over. Do you have good dental?” The guy stopped struggling, but muttered, “Goddamn motherfucker.”

“That’s Mr. Motherfucker to you,” Grey corrected.

The girls had left the room quietly, slipped out without notice. Perhaps there was an emergency protocol, learned in case of altercations, but that also told him that security were probably on their way. They needed to get this done now and get out ahead of any bigger thugs. Not that they couldn’t handle it – he had a two man wrecking crew here – but he wasn’t sure what was happening to him, and another fight could make it worse.

Darren was crouched behind the sofa, blood leaking from a small glass cut on his cheek, his eyes wide and terrified, especially since Tank was advancing on him, hands balled into fists at his side. “Who are you guys? You mob? You want money? My dad’s got money, but he won’t pay if you hurt me.”

“Stuff your money up your ass you cowardly piece of shit,” Tank snapped. “You wanna fight, stand up.”

“I don’t wanna fight,” Darren said, almost shrieking, cringing further back behind the couch.

Roan moved forward, giving Tank a pat on the shoulder, letting him know he could back off. “We don’t want money, we didn’t even want to fight.”

“I did,” Grey volunteered.

“I just want to know what happened to Jordan. Where is he? Why do you have his credit card?”

“I don’t!” He shouted, nearly hysterical. “I don’t know where Jordan is, all right? He stopped talking to me!”

“’Cause you stole his card?”

“Why do you keep saying that?! I didn’t! I swear to god man, Brittney just does shit, okay?”

“Brittney? Selfridge?” Suddenly it clicked: Brittney’s mother said she was a shoplifter. Maybe she was just a thief in general. “She’s with you, isn’t she? She left Jordan for you.”

“It’s not her fault,” Darren insisted. He was almost crying; the smell coming off of him was sharp and metallic with fear. “We didn’t know he’d run off. We didn’t!”

So what it came down to wasn’t his stifling life or his asshole of a father, but betrayal by his best friend and girlfriend. It would have been depressing if it wasn’t so pedestrian.

6 – D Is For Dangerous

Holden sat in one of the saddest motel rooms he had ever seen, and considering he was a hooker, that was saying something.

A tiny television that probably dated back to the ’80’s provided the only light in the room, a flickering, inconstant illumination that scudded by in eerie silence. It looked like a game show. The whole room smelled like bong water, body odor, dust, and failure.

Holden sat in the small room’s only chair, as Javier sat on the bed in his underwear, black shorts that he preferred because they hid the stains and could go a couple days without being washed. He was a bit on the short side, but slender and wiry, and he looked fragile and much younger than he was. He said he was seventeen, but he was actually twenty four and starting to show it around the eyes. He usually shot drugs between his toes or in other visually inaccessible places, but he had a few track marks on his legs that he usually hid with Band-Aids, but they had all fallen off onto the messy bedspread like pieces of sunburnt skin. He scratched his slightly sunken chest before picking up the bong he made out of an empty Coke can and his red plastic lighter. He often shaved his chest, but even when he didn’t, the few hairs that grew in were wispy and almost pubic, gathering just beneath the hollow of his throat like a clutch of crabgrass.

Javier – real name Brody Walker – held the flame briefly to the tiny hole in the center of the can, where the dried lump of pot sat, and took a deep breath of smoke through the mouth of the can. He held it until his coughing became convulsive, and then it all came out in a single spasmic cough. He then held out the can, his brown eyes glazing over, and asked in a harsh voice, “Want some? This is good shit.”

Holden shook his head. “Nah, I don’t like to mix booze and pot. Gets me too fucked up.” He hadn’t been drinking, but he wasn’t interested in getting high right now. He was on a mission.

He was also on painkillers. Being stabbed in the stomach at least got you that, even though these were so mild he bet Roan could down the whole bottle and think they were Flintstone’s Vitamins.

Brody nodded, and Holden pretended not to notice the glass meth pipe sitting on the nightstand, right next to the potato chip bag and crumpled pack of Camels. No one became a hustler if they were overly concerned about their health, or had any other way of getting the money they needed. A good thing in Brody’s case, as right now he looked like a corpse waiting to happen, propped up on a messy motel bad. “Cool. More for me.”

“So Cowboy told me you’d been working gigs with Coyote.”

“Some, not a lot. I wasn’t with him on the last one.”

“I assume not. Do you know what it was?”

Brody took a swallow of his energy drink (wouldn’t that be a counter to the pot?), and had a potato chip before telling him, “Couldn’t do it. I’m not into group sex.”

“So it was a gang bang gig?” That tracked with what he saw on the snuff site.

“Yeah. Not my thing, even though it mighta been a way into movies.”

“So it was a porn gig?”

“Nah.” He paused, frowned. “ Maybe. It was hard to say.” Holden didn’t know if the pot had made Brody’s natural inclination towards vagueness any worse than it already was. Even though he was born and raised somewhere in Kansas (he refused to name the city, saying no one had heard of it anyways), he always spoke like English was a foreign language to him, like he wasn’t sure what half the words actually meant.

“Who was the gig for?”

“Dunno. Some guy he met on Craigslist.”

“Coyote had a Craigslist ad?”

He was taking another hit, so he simply nodded and didn’t speak until he let the smoke out. “Yeah. He said he was tired of doin’ it curbside, that there was more money doin’ it online.”

Not a bad idea actually. Although cops had started cracking down on Craigslist prostitution ads, they mostly focused on under age and female. They didn’t seem to give too much of a damn about male prostitutes. Maybe because no one wanted to be seen doing “faggy stuff” like that. “Do you know what Coyote’s email address was?”

Brody’s glazed eyes settled on the television, which was now running an ad for “natural male enhancement”. Also known as boner pills. It was hilarious really. They couldn’t cure cancer, HIV, infection, or the common cold, but god damn, they could give eighty year old men who really shouldn’t be having sex anymore hard ons until the day they died. What was extra hilarious was that this also solved the boner problems of male prostitutes too – now they didn’t have to pretend to be into it, they could just use pharmaceuticals to fake attraction. Coincidence? “Umm, yeah. It was …” He scratched his head, and used his foot to scratch an itch on his opposite leg. Considering how stoned he was, that was an amazing bit of coordination. “Coyote404 at, umm … I wanna say sexmail? But that ain’t right.”

Holden had to think about that for a moment. “You don’t mean hotmail, do you?”

He snapped and pointed at him, a stoner’s lazy smile creasing his face. “Yeah man, that’s it. He gave it to me in case I wanted to get in on the Craigslist stuff with him, but I dunno. I mean, it sounds good, god knows I don’t like street cruisin’, but … fuck it. Seems like work. And I don’t wanna hang around some public library so I can answer emails from ugly dudes who can only get it over a computer, you know? Maybe I’m old fashioned.”

“How many cute clients do we get on the street, Jav? Last I counted, it was between zero and minus two.”

That made him chuckle and nod knowingly. “Yeah. Ain’t like the movies, is it?”

“Depends on the film.” He wanted to make a joke about a horror movie, but didn’t. “You stayin’ here for a while?”

He nodded. “Coupla days. I needed a break, you know? So I’m havin’ a vacation.” He snickered at the idea. “It’s over when I run outta money.”

Brody was homeless. Not really a shock, as people would probably be surprised to learn how often male prostitutes were homeless, or at least constantly in housing flux. It was a hard life, especially if you were supporting as many addictions as Brody was. “If you need a place to crash for a while, I can find you something.”

He shook his head again. “Naw. After what happened to Coyote, I’m moving on. Place seems dangerous, you know? I heard from this guy I know that Salt Lake City has a desperate need for boys, so I thought I’d check it out.”

“Makes sense. Ultra repressed Mormons probably can’t wait to suck a dick.”

“That’s my theory.”

“Go where the repression is. That philosophy of life has never steered me wrong.” He reached into his coat pocket and hesitated. If he gave him this, he had no guarantee he’d spend it on what he asked him to; he could turn around and spend it on more drugs. But what if he did? He had a shitty life, and one of his friends was just murdered (online for all to see, although he was unaware of this, and Holden wasn’t going to tell him). Let him have all the fucking drugs he wanted. He pulled out the money – two twenties and a couple of fives – and stood up, putting it on the nightstand beside the ashtray. “Buy a bus ticket, get something to eat that doesn’t come out of a vending machine. Okay?”

Brody’s eyes seemed to move slowly and deliberately to the money, and then up to his face. “Thanks dude. Wanna come with me?”

“No, I have enough clients as it is. But if it ever dries up, I just might.”

“Awesome.” Holden turned towards the door, and Brody said, “Hey, you leavin’? You don’t hafta leave. I wouldn’t mind the company.” He gazed at him with soft eyes, putting a hand on the empty side of the bed, in case he didn’t realize this was a come on. It was much, much subtler than his last one.

Brody didn’t talk about his past or himself ever. What Holden knew about him was the sum total of what everyone else knew: he was from Kansas, he had a step-sister in a wheelchair for some reason (undisclosed), and ended up on the West Coast because he wanted to get as far away from Kansas as humanly possible before falling in the ocean. That was it. But Holden didn’t need Brody to acknowledge he’d been sexually abused in his life, from a young age and often. Sometimes you could just see it, the empty hunger of the walking wounded, but it was more the way they treated sex. For some, like Brody, it was the equivalent of a handshake: there was no pleasure in it, it was expected, and they obliged because that was all anyone ever wanted from them.

The funny thing was, Holden was pretty sure Brody wasn’t gay. He wasn’t straight either. He had no sexuality whatsoever; it had been robbed from him along with nearly everything else. He was asexual, but could fake sexuality with anyone, because it meant nothing to him. Not now, not ever. Maybe that’s why he always felt bad for Brody. His abuser had left him hollow, and he’d never recovered from it. He was a doll always waiting to be posed. “I have a gig in a half hour, but thanks.”

“Raincheck?”

“Raincheck.” Of course he would never collect, and Brody probably knew that too. That’s probably why he smiled at him.

This was a huge lead. With Coyote’s email address, all he had to do was hack into his account, and it was more than likely if this was a Craigslist gig, there’d still be email evidence of who he was supposed to meet and where.

And then they could kill this fucking bastard.

****

Roan had spent his day discovering a new definition of futility: finding friends of Jordan and Brittney.

Now he had names of best friends – Darren Brewster and Bethany Stevens, respectively – but finding them turned out to be a huge pain in the ass. Bethany was apparently off in Europe with her parents, and had been since last month. The woman who answered at their home thought they might have been in Sweden right now, but wasn’t sure. They weren’t due back for another two weeks.

Darren was another story. He was the son of Sidney Brewster, a guy who had made part of his  fortune in a private security service that only worked with wealthy executives and politicians. (You know, armored limos, mercenary ex-soldiers who became bodyguards and armored limo drivers.) They weren’t Blackwater – they didn’t care about national security in the least, and foreign wars held no appeal. They were still a bunch of fucking bastards, though.

Brewster’s firm had been doing some business down in Mexico, protecting businessmen who could afford something better than the police force, and as such there were some concerns that he had run afoul of one of the drug cartels down there. Because of that, apparently there wasn’t a single member of the Brewster family that didn’t travel around without bodyguards. (Even here? Oh sure, the cartels had feelers everywhere, but it seemed pretty damn silly.) On top of this, Darren was impossible to get a hold of. He tried calling the Brewster compound, but he was told to make an appointment if he wanted to speak to Mr. Brewster. When he said he wanted to talk to Darren, not Sidney, he was told he’d have to see Sidney to get permission (!) to speak with Darren. Did Jordan have to go through that process? He doubted it.

Frustrated beyond belief, he started scouring Darren’s Facebook page, and attempted email. He pretended to be a girl who went to Rutherford, and wanted to hang out with him sometime. He waited to see if Darren would take the bait. If he was at all security savvy, he’d recognize it for the security breach it was, but he was counting on Darren being your average hormonal teenage boy. (I.E. dumb.)

But after that, it was their bizarro night out with the (mostly) straight hockey players. Not that they were planning a bizarre night, but how could it not be? These guys were younger than them (well, Dylan was closer to their ages), most were from other countries (Canada being the dominant one), and of course they were uber jocks. Why did they want to hang out with a couple of gay guys who weren’t uber jocks? He hated to think that Dylan’s tease about him being their “gay mascot” was true, but to some degree it probably was. Oh, and also there may have been hopes of getting involved in a huge fight.

Roan had expected Grey and Scott, maybe Tank, but there were many more guys involved in the bar crawl. Yes, Grey, Scott, and Tank, but also Jeff the New Yorker, Sandy the tall blond Russian, Richie with the oft broken nose – all members of the big parking lot fight – but there were two new guys as well (new to Roan, at any rate): Barrett and Zach. Barrett was a light skinned black man with broad shoulders and a lean frame, who said defensively, even though neither he nor Dylan had said anything, “Yes, there are black guys playing hockey. Not a lot, but a few. I’m not the only one.”

“I didn’t think you were,” Roan replied. “I’ve seen Jarome Iginla.” He was the Captain of the Calgary Flames, and while not the only black man in hockey, he was probably the most well known.

That made him blink in surprise. “Oh, yeah. I thought you weren’t a big hockey fan.”

“Canadian husband. I know my Canadian hockey teams.”

He seemed to accept that, mildly impressed.

Zach looked almost pre-pubescent. He had a round face and wheat colored hair so pale it was more of a suggestion of color than an actual hue. To confirm Roan’s suspicion, Richie put an arm around Zach’s shoulders and said, “He’s only nineteen. He can drink in Canada but he can’t drink here, so we’re gonna try and fake him in.”

“Might be hard.” Dylan said. Since he was a bartender, he had a great idea of who was at risk of being carded and who wasn’t.

“Let me get him through,” Sandy said, his Russian accent making his words sound more exotic than they actually were. “I’ll pretend I don’t speak the language and start getting belligerent. That usually works.”

“Only ’cause you’re a scary big Russian,” Jeff replied. “If you were from Moosejaw, no one would care.”

“What’s wrong with Moosejaw?” Zach asked, his brow furrowing. Oh, was that where he was from?

Because there were so many of them they took two cars, but because he and Dylan were taking the GTO, they were able to fit Tank, Grey and Scott in their car. All three of them praised the mix CD he put together for Grey, and wanted Roan to make them each one. Grey had asked him to put together a mix CD they could listen to at practices, since Grey was so impressed by These Arms Are Snakes. Roan couldn’t imagine anything sillier, but was able to throw something together quickly and give it to him.

Roan actually thought he might trash it, because he threw on songs that he knew might offend some people, such as the two Pansy Division songs (“Hockey Hair” and “Manada” the French language version) and ones with buttloads of obvious cursing (“Stoopid Ass” was probably the most egregious offender there). But astonishingly, most of the team enjoyed it, and thought the Pansy Division songs were funny. The coach claimed the Nirvana song gave him a headache (“Scentless Apprentice”) and made them turn it off, but the guys in general loved it. Dylan told them not to encourage him, since he loved perplexing people with his obscure and bizarre music choices, but Dylan flashed him an affectionate, exasperated look as he said it. Roan told them he’d see what he could do in his free time.

It was a pub crawl of great scope. They started off in a sports bar where almost all the Falcons guys were recognized (not Zach), and then they moved on to a trendy nightclub that was often difficult to get into, although not for local sports guys. It was slightly Eurotrash, filled with lots of neon and glass and metal, and everyone in it seemed coated in fake bake and wore clothes so tight they could have been sprayed on, even the guys. Although about half the (straight) crew chatted up some women, it was astonishingly dull. Even Tank made a face and said, “This reminds me of a club I went to in Montreal for my eighteenth birthday. That place sucked.”

Scott grunted an affirmative, and swirled the dregs of his drink around in his glass. Most of the guys were pacing themselves, save for Jeff, who was knocking his drinks back like they were all ice water. But to his credit, it hadn’t had any effect on him yet.

So they moved on to a slightly grottier bar which was marginally more entertaining, although there was a baseball game playing on the TV over the bar. Sandy and Jeff watched it for a couple of minutes, and Jeff suddenly exclaimed, “Why does everyone love that fucking sport? My Dad once took me to a Mets game, and I was bored out of my fucking skull. Nothin’ happened. For hours, nothin’ happened. At least in hockey, there’s always the potential of a fight.”

“I don’t get it either,” Sandy admitted. “But if I were getting paid as much as they are, I’d learn to put up with it.”

Jeff shrugged and grimaced. “Good point. So what does that tub o’ guts on the mound make? A couple million?”

“I bet he gets winded walking to the clubhouse,” Grey said, smirking at his own bitchiness. But, to be fair, all the Falcons at the table were lean and hard, toned to perfection. If you had need of a cement wall but no cement, they could easily stand in for it. They were in so much better shape than the star pitcher being featured on the screen it was sort of comical and grossly unfair.

Dylan wasn’t drinking any booze, as he really didn’t like alcohol (funny for a bartender), and Roan only had a drink if they had a decent microbrew available. So far, he’d only had one.

Next bar over, when Dylan disappeared to the bathroom, Sandy asked him, “So who’s the woman?”

Grey punched him in the shoulder, almost knocking the Russian out of his chair. “Dude, you don’t ask shit like that.”

He rubbed his shoulder and flashed him an indignant look. If Grey could hurt a guy as big as him, that was impressive, especially since he obviously held back. “What, you’re not curious?”

“Neither of us are women, so neither of us are,” Roan told him. Wasn’t the first time he’d been asked such a thing, probably wouldn’t be the last.

Sandy scowled. “You know what I mean. Who -”

“Shut up,” Scott said, in a low, deadly voice. Sandy glanced at his team captain, and Roan saw immediately that he was giving up. Obeying a direct order from his Captain, or did he really not like the murderous look in his eyes? Both?

“Fine,” he said, sulking. “I just wondered.”

Another boring bar awaited them, and it was at this point that Dylan offered to take them all to Panic. Although Sandy, Jeff, and Barrett didn’t seem thrilled with the idea, the fact that Scott, Grey, and Tank wanted to go seemed to clinch the deal (Zach and Richie didn’t seem to care either way).

So they all went to Panic, where it was trance night, meaning they were greeted by high energy dance music and an amused Luis behind the bar. No one seemed to recognize the guys as hockey players, although they all recognized Dylan, and some recognized him. They got lots of free drinks, inspiring the guys (not him and Dylan, though) to dare each other to drink the “girliest” drinks possible. Tank won the contest with a “pink confetti daiquiri”, which he actually said wasn’t bad, and ordered a second one to prove it. Dylan told him it had pomegranate juice in it, but he had no idea what the “confetti” part of it was or even meant.

A cute guy who looked like a James Franco stand in came to the table and asked Scott to dance. Sandy and Jeff burst into howls of laughter, but Scott’s guard was obviously down from the several drinks he already had, and Dylan and Roan watched as he smirked and visually sized the guy up. “Sure,” Grey said, getting up and following him to the dance floor.

This made his teammates laugh even harder. Apparently they thought this was Scott playing along and being silly, confirming that none of them knew he was bisexual. Except perhaps Grey – Roan wasn’t convinced he didn’t know. Not only because he was Scott’s roommate, but also because Grey wasn’t as dumb as he liked people to think he was.

After watching Scott dance for a bit (he wasn’t bad), a rather drunk Zach proclaimed, “I wanna dance!”

“No you don’t, jailbait,” Jeff said, and it sounded funny and vaguely threatening in his thick New York accent.

A twink at the bar overheard Zach’s proclamation, and came up to the table. “I’ll dance with you, sweetie.” He was probably barely legal himself.

“Awesome,” Zach said, scraping his chair back. As he stood up unsteadily, he added, “Don’t get grabby. I’m straight.”

“You know what the difference between a straight guy and a gay guy is? A six pack.”

Zach looked at him blankly, confirming how drunk he was. “Huh?” But the twink just headed to the dance floor, and Zach followed.

They watched for a moment, and then burst into laughter, as Zach was no Scott – his idea of dancing looked a lot like a slow motion seizure, with some kind of abortive robot moves thrown in. Now everybody knew for certain he was straight. “I thought you Canadian dudes could hold your liquor better,” Jeff said, wiping tears from his eyes.

“Depends on the Canadian dude,” Barrett said.

“If he was Quebecois, he could,” Tank, the only Quebecois as the table, insisted.

“If he was Quebecois, he’d secede from the team,” Richie replied.

Grey slapped a twenty dollar bill in the center of table, and said, “I betcha before we head outta here, he dances on a table.” So they started throwing money in a pool, betting on whether he would dance on a table (or the bar) or pass out first. Jeff bet he’d vomit first; Barrett thought he might actually make out with a dude.

Roan skirted the dance floor on his way to the bathroom, as his couple of beers had finally caught up with his bladder, and he chuckled to himself, mainly because he never thought he’d have such a good time with a bunch of straight jocks. He still had no idea why they wanted to hang around with him, but there was some fun to be had in male bonding. And these guys were friends as much as teammates, which made them easy to be around, even though they taunted and razzed each other as only macho male guys could. (Although nobody really razzed Scott or Grey – probably because Scott was their captain, and probably because Grey was essentially a sentient pile of muscle.)

He’d just entered the bathroom when he heard behind him, “Holy fuck. This is a men’s room?” Grey had come with him. Why he didn’t know.

Panic’s men’s room was impressive. It was pressed blue glass tile and strips of ice blue neon lighting supplementing the white lighting overhead. The sinks and stalls were stainless steel, the urinals a snow white porcelain. It was kept so clean you could probably eat off the floor. The management actively discouraged hooking up in the bathroom, although Roan knew it must have happened from time to time. Even so, there was a small laminated sign on the wall next to the automatic hand dryer that said explicitly, ‘No fucking around’. “Depending on the gay club, you get a really nice bathroom or a really disgusting one,” he told him.

“I’ve never been in a bathroom this nice,” Grey admitted, still looking around. “Wow. Think I could rent it?”

“Doubt it.” Although he wasn’t great about having people watch him pee, he really had to take a piss before his back teeth started floating.

He thought Grey needed to take a piss too, but basically all he did was study the condom machine, which did have an impressive laundry list of sizes, colors, and attributes, and then said, “I just wanted to let you know yeah, I know.”

“Know what?”

“About Scott. Tank does too, I think. No one else does.”

Yep – smarter than he admitted. Tank too. “You don’t let on to the others?”

Grey shook his head. “It’s Scott’s business. If he wanted to tell anyone, he would.”

“Does Scott know you know?”

That made him snort a laugh. “Doubt it.”

So he’d never talked about it with him. No surprise there really. But did that mean that Roan was the only person he’d ever admitted his bisexuality to? That would be weird.

Roan knew someone else had come in, but as he was zipping up he paid them no mind. But then he got the oddest sense that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Was the guy staring at him? Why did his mental alarm bells go off?

It happened so fast that by the time Roan turned away from the urinal, it was all over.

The man pulled something out of his jacket, but either hadn’t noticed Grey or hadn’t cared. He’d moved for Roan, but Grey was on him before he could advance more than an inch or two. Grey slammed him viciously face first into the blue glass wall over the urinals, pinning his hand to the wall along with it. Whoever the assailant was, Grey had a solid half foot and roughly a hundred pounds on him. “Not tonight, fucko,” Grey told him, in the most deceptively calm voice ever. Blood was dripping down the wall from the man’s shattered nose.

“Nice save,” Roan admitted, still surprised a guy as big as Grey could move that fast. The man was struggling, but Grey was making him kiss the wall, and there was no way he could get his hand free. He wasn’t moving until Grey allowed him to move. “You missed your calling in security.”

“Yeah, well, if the hockey job ever goes south, I figure I can bodyguard or something. I know judo, you know.”

“I know.”

The man spoke, but his voice was so nasal and muffled by glass it was hard to tell what he said at first. After thinking about it a moment, Roan realized he’d asked, “Since when do you have a bodyguard?”

“Weren’t you paying attention to our conversation? He isn’t my bodyguard. He’s my hockey enforcer.”

“I prefer defenseman in mixed company,” Grey said wryly.

“My mistake.” He looked at the weapon the man was still holding, even though blood circulation was starting to cut off to his hand. Roan pried a finger loose, and said, “If you don’t drop it, I’ll start breaking fingers.”

With reluctance, he dropped it. It clattered on the floor, and looked almost like a mini sickle, with a solid black plastic handle leading up to a wickedly curved blade and a sharply pointed tip. “What the fuck is that?” Grey wondered. The assailant gurgled. He wasn’t trying to talk, he was simply trying to breathe while his face was being ground into the wall.

“It’s a tile cutter,” Roan told him, having seen Paris use one enough on his various home renovation projects. He also knew that those bastards were far sharper than your average knife.

In theory, a clumsy weapon. But if you really wanted to kill someone, a great choice.

5 – Misfits and Mistakes

Holden looked around a bit more, trying to see if he recognized anyone else in any of the clips. The problem was there was hundreds of hours of film to see. Still, before they left, Holden thought he got another hit: a female hooker this time, a woman who went by the street name Lacey, but Holden said her real name was Karen. (He had no last name for her.)

It looked like the footage was assembled from different places and involved different assailants, although it appeared that Coyote and Lacey were both killed in a similar basement, probably the same one. Was Lacey actually dead, though? Holden kept in better touch with his boys than any of the girls working the strip, and the female hookers he knew now mainly worked out of the same escort company as him, putting them in  a higher echelon. Higher whore echelon? Okay, pseudo alliteration was amongst the lowest form of humor, but this was pretty bleak shit here.

Holden said he’d ask around, see if he could find out where Coyote might have picked up his last john – they probably wouldn’t talk to a cop or an investigator, but they’d talk to one of their own – and find out if anyone had seen Lacey lately. Roan had his own sources and would try and work them (okay, Kevin and Dropkick, but they were still sources), but he was sure Holden would probably get more usable information.

Admittedly this had nothing to do with the Hatcher case, but he’d be completely fucked if he let wholesale murder go.

He called Hatcher and thankfully got his machine. He left a message saying he needed him to find out who owned the tabu-xxx site, and that he’d explain the attachment to Jordan’s case later. Roan had no idea what he’d say. He figured he’d burn that bridge when he came to it.

While Dylan was getting ready for bed, he checked his email, and saw that Hatcher had sent him one, saying “Rutherford”. Opening the email, there was nothing but a link. He clicked it, and after a very strange moment where something briefly flashed on his screen and died (had the bastard sent him a virus?) he suddenly found himself at what looked like a root directory.

Hatcher had sent him a hack. He was inside the Academy’s computer database.

It was as illegal as all hell, and while he was sure software “genius” Hatcher had a way of protecting him from a back trace, he still knew he had to get out of there as quickly as possible. He had broken into an occupied house, and he was just lucky they were heavy sleepers.

He sifted through the Brittney’s, and when he found photos, he started comparing the most likely suspects to the girls he found in photos with Jordan on his Facebook page. Eventually he found her: Brittney Selfridge, a seventeen year old from Bellevue, a bottle blonde who wore way too much make up with way too much glitter, and her face was so slender and narrow it seemed like her cheekbones were razorblades that could cut you on casual contact. She was trying very hard to look like a divorcee in her early thirties for some reason, and Roan couldn’t imagine that was popular amongst kids now.

He  decided he’d try and bother the Selfridges tomorrow. He called Kevin and Murphy, but he got both their answering machines. Could they both be out on a call? Still, he asked them both about Coyote (a/k/a Roman Smith) and Lacey a/k/a Karen. He assumed they’d be intrigued enough by his vague message to call back as soon as possible.

He searched for information about Coyote’s murder, but there was almost nothing to find. He got one of those one and half inch brief columns inside the local section of the newspaper, and all it described him as was a “transient” killed by “homicidal violence”, which could have been anything from a stabbing to a beating. The fact that Holden knew he had been strangled meant that he either heard about it from some of the boulevard boys (most likely) or he’d read or heard an account that he just couldn’t dig up online. Most likely it was the boys. Street people had their own network, a way of talking between themselves that usually wasn’t open to outsiders. This is why Holden was such a good point man for this info. He wasn’t a part of them anymore, but he used to be and was thought of fondly, and that was enough.

Once they were in bed, Dylan asked him why anyone would be into snuff, whether fake or real. That was a good question that Roan couldn’t answer, except some people just liked the idea of fucking a corpse, and/or having the ultimate power of taking someone else’s life got their rocks off. Having actually killed people, Roan couldn’t imagine taking such pleasure in it. It wasn’t fun; it was an awful feeling. (Although – and he’d never admit it to anyone – there were times when it was a relief. Killing Switzer felt like something that should have been done a long time ago, if not by him than by someone else. He had been the Human equivalent of a mad dog.) But then again, he wasn’t a psychopath. Oh, he flirted with sociopath at times, but at least he wasn’t so far gone that he couldn’t see it.

He slept well, except for the time he woke up and found his heart racing around his chest like it was being chased by a bunch of skinheads. It actually left him panting and sweating, and he laid there in the dark, staring up at the ceiling, wondering if this was a precursor to a heart attack. Was it a heart attack? He didn’t think so, because he wasn’t in pain. He was just a little short of breath, and waking up due to a racing heart was always a bit disconcerting. He was just glad he didn’t wake up Dylan, because he might freak about it.

He got up, went into the bathroom, and after taking a piss, dug out the hidden stash of downers he had inside an old anti-clotting agent bottle, and took a Valium to bring his heart rate down. Was this confirmation of what he’d already guessed? The rules of infecteds had stopped applying to him, and that meant he probably wasn’t going to die like one. Oh, maybe he might die mid-transition, but he wasn’t going to slowly waste away like Paris. No, he might just die suddenly in his sleep, which should have been a relief, but wasn’t. Because how fair was that to Dylan? To wake up one morning next to a corpse. He should have left him and stayed gone, for his sake. Roan just knew he was never going to be anything but a temporary bit of respite before the huge disappointment.

When he felt the drugs settle in and envelope him like a warm cloak, he went back to bed and snuggled next to Dylan, who smelled good (he almost always smelled good, and Roan had no idea how he did that), and wondered if there was any way he could make this if not right, better. How did you prepare someone for your own eventual death? Paris managed to do it pretty well, but it was long established that he wasn’t Paris. Paris had probably decided Dylan was perfect for him and set it all in motion, matchmaking after death. Again, terribly creepy, but also kind, because Paris knew how lousy he was when he had no one to force him to go out in the world and interact with people. Dylan didn’t need help with that – he wasn’t that fucked up.

Roan must have fallen asleep, because before he had anything approaching a course of action, he found himself waking up to a ringing phone. He felt a great impulse to pick up the phone, say “I didn’t do it,” and hang up, but he should probably find out who it was before he did that. The call might be for Dylan.

As it turned out, it was Dropkick. With no preamble, she asked, “How did I know you’d get involved in the dead hookers case?”

“I’m very predictable.” He rubbed his eyes, and suddenly realized what she’d said. “Hookers? Plural? So Lacey is dead.”

“You mean Karen Ramirez? I thought you knew she was dead.”

“I knew she was missing, and I suspected she was dead, but I didn’t know for sure. How long?”

“How long what?” Now she sounded pissed off. Maybe because she just accidentally leaked information.

“Has she been dead.”

There was a long silence, in which Roan felt psychic, because he knew she was considering  hanging up on him. Finally she sighed, and said, “Do you want the coroners report? I ain’t givin’ it to you.”

“I don’t want a report, just when she was found.” He knew when she was in this mood, he shouldn’t push his luck.

“Three days ago.”

So fairly recent. That wasn’t good. “Strangled like Smith?”

More pointed silence. “How did you know that?”

“I was talking with Holden, he -”

She groaned in disappointment. “Fox. I shoulda guessed.”

“It’s  all over the street. They know about Roman.”

“And how the fuck do they know? That information wasn’t shared.”

“How the fuck do they know anything? Nine out of ten times they know when a drug bust is going down, and I assume vice isn’t advertising that. It’s just one of those weird things.”

“Why a hustler, Roan? This isn’t something I should be worried about, is it?”

“What? Holden’s an assistant investigator now. I thought you knew that.”

“And that bothers the hell out of me. They aren’t the most well adjusted people in the world, you know.”

“Neither am I, so that works. Will you at least tell me if you have a suspect in either killing?”

“No suspects. How can their be? We can’t even get a decent timeline tracing their last known whereabouts.”

“What about Kevin? He got anything for you?”

“He tried, but all we have is that Smith may have been seen hustling near Antique Row about a day before his probable death, or he was seen hitchhiking out of the city near a freeway overpass. Both are impossible to confirm.”

This was where Holden could come in handy. Either no one knew for sure and the cops heard two different stories, or someone knew and was deliberately not telling the cops. Holden wasn’t a cop, so he’d be in at a chance for the truth. And it would make sense that Smith might be at Antique Row, as, in spite of its name, a lot of young male hustlers did business down there. “If I find anything out, I’ll let you know.”

“You better.” That almost sounded like a warning, and probably was.

Downstairs, he found Dylan brewing tea, and looking unusually snazzy in a pale blue button down shirt and neat black jeans that could have passed for classy. That’s when Roan remembered, “Oh yeah, you’re going to interview for Silver today.” Silver was an upscale restaurant/bar that had recently opened, but also had a recent vacancy in its bartending staff.

Dylan looked almost embarrassed as he took a bite of his toast. “Yeah. Is it wrong that I might go work for hets just because they’re offering dental?”

“You know, I’m sure there’s a dirty joke somewhere, but I’m too tired to find it.”

Dylan grimaced and gave him a dirty look, but there wasn’t much anger behind it. “Thanks for the support, hon.”

“Hey, I’ll support you ’til you can’t stand anymore.”

That got a small, reluctant snicker out of Dylan. “You’re horrible, you know that?”

“Says it on my business card.”

He helped himself to toast and tea, and flipped through the paper, scanning it, wondering how Karen’s death fell through the cracks. Maybe it didn’t; maybe her body was found on a busy news day, and report of it just got bumped. It could happen.

After a moment, Dylan said hesitantly, “Did you read the thing on the new domestic partnership registry?”

“You mean the “no marriage for you, fags” act? Yes I did. Why?”

“Well, um, it says it covers hospital visitation, you know, meaning a doctor would have to let your partner see you like they were actually family or something. I was thinking maybe that would be something we should look into. I mean, we’ve been lucky so far, what with Dee’s friends and the fact that most of the hospitals know you already, but what happens if we run into some stickler for regulations who just doesn’t care who you are or who you know?”

“Like Nurse Rached.”

“Exactly.” He paused briefly. “Do I add that to your movie reference list or your book reference list?”

“Could go either way. You pick.” He considered what Dylan was saying, and what he actually meant. What he meant was “what if they won’t let me see you if you’re hospitalized again?” and that was a concern. If he was going to be unfair to Dylan by possibly dying on him in his sleep, he owed him at least that much. “Does it say what dreary government office we trek to to do this?”

“Umm, I don’t know. You want to do this?”

“I do. Find out where we go, and we’ll go.”

“How do you know it will be a dreary office building?”

“Because it’s an unwritten law that all government bureaus should be bleak hellscapes straight from Kafka’s or Orwell’s worst nightmares. And yes, that’s two for the literary reference pile.”

Dylan gave him a disarming, sweet grin, and Roan instantly felt bad for him. He should have had better taste in men than him. Talk about taking up with a lost cause.

Dylan left cheerful, which Roan figured was the least he could do for him, and only then he put in a call to the Selfridges. He was prepared for a machine, but the mother picked up. (He knew from looking at Brittney’s school records her name was Elizabeth, but he wasn’t going to tip his hand so early on.) “Hello, Mrs. Selfridge? I’m Roan McKichan, a private detective, looking into the disappearance of Jordan Hatcher, and -”

She interrupted him with a disdainful snort. “Oh, she ran off with him, did she? I’m not surprised.”

“So Brittney’s gone?” He actually knew from the school records that she had missed two days in a row, unexcused. He’d guessed she was gone, but again, it was safer to pretend he was an idiot. People generally opened up more to idiots than to know it alls.

“Of course she’s gone. And good riddance. Mouthy little brat.”

Wow. Bad relationship there, huh? “How long has Brittney been gone?”

There was a noise like a drag off a cigarette before she said, “Three days, Mr. McKichan, after we got her out of her last shoplifting charge. And before you ask, no, we have no idea where she ran off to, and I can’t say I much care. I’m sure you think I’m a horrible mother, but ever since she turned sixteen she’s been out of control. Drinking, drugs, shoplifting, and going out with boys she knows damn well her father and I won’t approve of. She’s trying to make us angry, and why? We give that ungrateful bitch everything, and she only gives us headaches.”

“Teens rebel. They’re good at that.”

“Perhaps, but she doesn’t have to be so obnoxious about it. The only thing she’s actually dedicated herself to over the past year is pissing us off. If only she’d work so hard at her studies.”

“Has she run off before?”

“Once, but that was just to her Aunt’s in Santa Clara. She was packed up and sent home within a day. Kate can’t stand her anymore.”

“So she’s unlikely to have gone there again.” Not a question, but she seemed to take it as such.

“No, I’d have had an angry phone call by now if that was the case.”

“Can I have her name anyways?”

She sighed heavily, as if just talking to him was a burden. “Katherine Norris. But she’s not there, and there’s no way in hell she’d take that dirtbag boyfriend of hers down there.”

“You don’t like Jordan.”

“He’s an idiot. I know his father is supposedly some kind of genius, but it must not run in the family. That boy’s as dumb as a post, and as close to white trash as you can get for a pampered rich boy.”

That just confirmed a suspicion on his part, and he wanted to say the father had an air of white trashiness about him too, but didn’t because it didn’t matter. “So you really don’t have any idea where they might have gone?”

“No, I do not, and you know what? I don’t care. I hope for your sake you find Jordan, but if you find Brittney, don’t bother letting us know.” And with that, she hung up on him.

Well then – two poor little rich kids who hated their families. (And vice versa?) If that wasn’t a recipe for runaways, he didn’t know what was.