Tramps and Thieves

by Rhys Ford

  “He’s not right in the head, but that station doesn’t have a lot of options. Hard to keep detectives there. Place can be a shithole,” James said, his eyes narrowed and sharp. Moving to make room for Alex, he shook his head. “Never liked that asshole to begin with, but you don’t fuck with a man’s rights.”

  “Had a lot of dominance games going. Shoving into personal space and smirking. He made sure we felt like we were pinned in. Classic psychological terrorism. Probably beats his kids or dog,” Rook murmured, resuming his pacing for a few strides, then stopped in front of his grandfather. “I didn’t kill Harold. Sure, he was a dick, but—I didn’t kill him. Vicks told me Harold was still alive when I first came in… then walked that back with Dante in the room. Harold looked dead when I got to him, Archie, like cold dead, but now I can’t be fucking sure of that.”

  “No one thinks you killed him. I’m not going to say I liked Harold—nobody did—but you’d never murder him. No one in the family would, and if anyone was going to, it’d be a Martin.” Archie’s reassurance was gruff and tinted with anger. “That cop tries to put this on you, we’ll bury him.”

  “Rook, what the hell were you doing there?” Dante asked, trying to get the conversation back on track. “And Vicks said something about the bird statue?”

  “Remember when I told you I scored a Maltese Falcon at auction? Not one from the earlier films. It was one from a ’75 spoof called The Black Bird.” Rook’s eyes took on a familiar fanatical gleam, and his voice dropped a register, pouring a seductive velvet into his voice. “They made a cast from one of the originals and threw out a few resin copies. You can tell by the serial number on—”

  “Cuervo, as much as I love you, can’t have you going off on something right now,” Dante cut him off. “Less about the bird and more about how it’s connected to Harold. Didn’t you say he bought it? Or you lost it?” He leaned over to Archie. “Vicks said someone struck Harold with the statue and that’s what killed him, but I don’t trust anything that ass says. What he… told us, there’s no way he’d have survived that attack, even if he’d been alive when Rook was there.”

  “See, the bird’s important.” Rook stopped in midstride. “Used to belong to a guy who… mentored Hawkins—”

  “Who’s Hawkins?” James hissed at Alex. “Jesus, this is worse than a telenovela.”

  “Cat burglar,” Alex whispered loudly back, “one of Aunt Beatrice’s old boyfriends. Rook’s Fagin—”

  “You two,” Archie grumbled. “Hush. Finish up, boy, before I pass out from boredom.”

  “I won the bird from one of Natterly’s estate auctions. Harold bid against me, because Davis Natterly let it slip I’d wanted it. He’s tight with Harold and his mom, which I didn’t find out until afterwards, or I’d have said something like—keep your mouth shut around Harold.” The gleam in Rook’s eyes was back, but this time, it was fueled with a righteous anger. “After the auction, Harold sniped it. Handed over his credit card, said he was buying it for me as a present to show no hard feelings, and yanked the bird out from under me. As far as Davis was concerned, he was doing Harold a solid by letting him get it for me.”

  “He should lose his license,” Alex grumbled. “I don’t care how much of a favor he thought he was doing.”

  “Yeah. Davis and I had a few words, but we’re kind of stuck with each other. He and his brother score some really good estate listings, and I need the merchandise, so reporting him isn’t going to do me any good,” Rook admitted. “Anyway, once I found out Harold jacked the statue, I demanded it back. That’s what he was preening about a couple of weeks ago at dinner. He had the falcon and wouldn’t stop poking at me. So… I told him to fuck off and that I’d just take it.”

  Dante rubbed a hand across his face, then sighed. “Okay, so you told your cousin you were going to break into his house?”

  “And take back what was mine. Fuck him. What’s a few doors? I had all the codes, but it was good to see if I could do it.” His lover nodded, then looked around the room at their shocked faces. “What? I was going to leave the fucker a check. But I didn’t kill him. Vicks’s got a couple of theories he’s kicking around. Said I knifed Harold, then brought Alex back so I could find Harold’s body.”

  “Assuming then you found out Harold was alive, so you then finished killing him with the one thing you were going to steal from him?” Dante picked at the label of his beer, reasoning out Vicks’s case. “Forensics would have to match up the timeline, and then he’d have to break your alibi. We won’t know where you were until we get the morgue’s report.”

  “Mr. Archie,” Rosa called out from the doorway. The concern on her face when they drove up turned to worry, a deep line wrinkling the skin between her eyebrows. “One of the lawyers is on the phone. He said they’ve just arrested Ms. Sadonna. The detective on the case thinks she hired Rook to kill Harold for her.”

  “God, the idiots I hire. Why the fuck would they think that?” Archie’s face flushed red, and a vein pulsed on his forehead. “Why the ever-loving hell would Rook even have anything to do with Harold’s wife? She’s a tart, and the boy doesn’t even like women.”

  “Um, I did have something to do with her.” Shooting Dante a sheepish look, Rook rocked back on his heels. “Because Sadonna’s the one who gave me the security codes so I could break into their house.”

  Four

  SHADOWS DRAPED over Potter’s Field’s main showroom as the dark was kept at bay by the slender strips of LEDs running along the bottom of the shop’s glass cases. Sparkles of faint blue kicked back from the dozens of reflective memorabilia displayed throughout the enormous space, glittering pieces of childhoods forged from books and screens. The shop itself held only a small fraction of his whole inventory, cheaper pieces people would spot in a window and reminiscence on Saturdays spent eating sugary cereal in front of a flickering TV. Rook’s wealth lay in the high-ticket items kept off-site, pieces in a vast collection he scrounged and haggled for at auctions or estate sales. It was the hunt that kept him going, giving him the rush Rook needed to scratch the itch he had inside of him.

  He’d come a long way since the days of running short cons and hawking coin tosses for stuffed animals on the fairgrounds. As much as he missed the thrill of cracking open a door and slipping through the shadows, Rook liked knowing he’d built something on his own. Potter’s Field was something he’d imagined up and made a success, using connections and every bit of pop culture trivia he’d soaked up while working the big tops and rides.

  Rook knew every bit and bob the shop had to offer. His hands touched each one, no matter how big or small. After the loss of his Chewbacca statue to a hail of police bullets, he’d been the one to set the six-foot-tall soft sculpture of UrSol into its place, debating with himself furiously about if the Mystic should be put safely behind glass or left bare to the world, allowing people near the artistic marvel.

  He’d opted to leave the Mystic bare but cordoned off by black velvet ropes, trusting the store’s customers to look, take pictures and selfies, but not to touch.

  “And if that isn’t an allegory for me, I don’t know what the fuck is,” Rook muttered to himself. “Or is that a metaphor? Shit, now I have to go look it up. I hate not knowing crap.”

  “You know more than I do. About a lot of things,” Dante said, leaning against the doorframe connecting the store to the lift leading to Rook’s apartment. “A hell of a lot of things, cuervo. I’d say you make me feel stupid, but that says more about my ignorance than your intelligence.”

  He loved Dante Montoya for a lot of reasons. His hot body, the way the Latino made him ache to be touched, the conversations they had about everything under the sun and sometimes a few outside of the galaxy, but the main reason he adored having Montoya in his life was the man pulled no punches and was always willing to defend Rook against anything, including himself.

  Until he met Dante, he hadn’t trusted anyone to fight for him. Archie and Alex said they were willing to
go in on a battle, standing shoulder to shoulder with him, but it took a husky-voiced, amber-eyed detective who forced his way past Rook’s walls for Rook to actually believe anyone would care for him.

  Dante Montoya made him feel—made him love—and that was something Rook hoped he’d never forget.

  “I love you, but that was something Harold liked to poke at me about.” The store’s ambient light tugged on Dante’s handsome face, stroking the plump of his lips with a faint azure tint. “I never went to school, and he went… shit, to everything. He gives… gave… me shit about how I said things, like foyer. Called me ignorant. I learned by reading. How the fuck was I supposed to know it was pronounced fo-yay from a damned book? He’d mock me all the time, just to get a rise out of me. Sure, I hate looking… stupid, but not enough to kill him….”

  He should have felt stronger standing in the middle of something he’d built, but the whispering doubts were still there, the tiny slivers of sharp rebuke lurking in his mind, reminding him he’d come to a sorry end like everyone else he knew. There were regrets, large ones, and questions like should he have turned in the stash he’d saved for a rainy day? Was Montoya worth that sacrifice? Was he expecting Montoya to keep him around? It wore at him, picking at his confidence until he was riddled with holes and the only thing he had to fill them were the memories of when he’d failed.

  Dante touching his face, work-roughened fingers skimming over his chin and then a swipe across his lips, brought Rook back from the edge of his worrying. Smiling, his lover caught him up, hooking a strong arm around Rook’s waist to pull him into a hug.

  “First off, baby, I will never get tired of hearing you say you love me,” Dante whispered into Rook’s mouth as he brushed a kiss over his lips. They stung slightly, chapped from chewing on them, a worry-tell he’d worked hard to break, but now, on the straight and narrow, those things didn’t matter anymore. “Secondly, you are one of the smartest men I know. You scare me with everything you know. The random things you store in your head amazes me.”

  He should have pulled away. He kept meaning to. Every time Dante held him, a part of Rook said to step back, to not be held in, but he stayed. He always stayed, and the soft light in Dante’s eyes told him he knew of the wars raging inside of Rook’s mind.

  Instead Rook deflected. “You’re just sucking up to me because you owe me twenty bucks from the last poker game.”

  “The damned game was rigged. I just haven’t figured out how you did it.” He playfully tugged on Rook’s lower lip, pinching at the plump, then laughing when Rook bit his finger lightly. “Your cousin was… an asshole. You threatened him because you’re someone he couldn’t bully. Even when he was being the worst he could be, there was always something you were that he’d never be, a man who could stand on his own two feet, and when you get knocked down, no one can stop you from getting back up again.”

  “But still, not murder.”

  “No, not murder. Not you,” Dante agreed. “But why…. Did I meet her? What’s her name?”

  “Sadonna Swann. Like Madonna but with an S.” Rook grinned. “She says that all the time. She’s a tease, but I like her, and she can give as good as she gets. I don’t know if you ever met her. She and Harold didn’t exactly run in the same circles. Okay, mostly she thought dinner at Archie’s was like trying to sit down with a table of starving hyenas.”

  “She’s not wrong,” he pointed out.

  “No, not by much.” Rook had to give Dante that. The infrequent Sunday dinners at Archie’s were a knife-in-the-back kind of event where the good china was scraped by expensive silver and the wine flowed as freely as the veiled insults. “She’s blonde, curvy. Pretty, old-school glam. Like a modern Mae West. A little bit older than you. You’d know her if you saw her. Really kicks ass on stage, especially in meaty things like Streetcar. She was great in that. But she got famous doing movies. She was in that this-isn’t-Swamp-Thing-but-totally-Swamp-Thing movie I made you watch a couple of weeks ago. The one with the nutria. Strictly B-movie stuff but solid work.”

  “Wait, the one whose dress kept getting wet and torn?” Dante cocked his head, humming for a second, then asked, “The one Manny said is restarting her career?”

  “Yeah, don’t let an actress hear you say that. They’ll tell you they’re just looking for the right project.” If doubt chewed on him, guilt over Sadonna was making a meal of his guts. Pulling free of Dante’s embrace left Rook hollow inside, but he needed some breathing room, space to work out the jumbled emotions in his head.

  A few steps took Rook over to the spot where he’d found Danielle, murdered by his assistant and once trusted friend, Charlene. Both women were now dead, caught up in a violence he’d been ill-prepared to deal with. Charlene’s betrayal and her willingness to kill anyone in her way had been a shock to Rook’s core. All in pursuit of the gems and gold coins Rook’d stashed away as a nest egg in case things went sideways.

  Charlene died a few feet away, her life seeping out of her in the back entrance’s corridor. The store held too much death, and still, a hell of a lot of dreams. A part of him wanted to rip everything up by the roots and go elsewhere, but it’d taken him too damned long to find his home, and now too many people, including Dante’s uncle Manny, depended on him to be there, needing to feed their families and continue on with their lives. Running away would solve his problems but fuck up a lot of people in the process.

  There’d been a time when Rook wouldn’t have cared what happened to the people around him. He’d cut more than one string, buried more than a few shallow friendships to keep himself safe. Now it was so damned different. Now when trouble hit, Rook found himself standing to protect the people he’d have left in the dust only a year ago.

  Dante’s presence in his life, in his bed, meant he had to shed any connection to the days he’d spent freeing the rich from the burden of their wealth. He didn’t like having a conscience. Hated the tingle of wrong in the back of his throat and brain. There hadn’t been a rebuke in his thoughts—ever—not until he’d let Dante Montoya in, and now it was as if he were caught in a bumper car ride every time he ran up against something even remotely illegal.

  Or… unjust.

  “I know what you’re thinking, cuervo. I see you looking over there,” Dante said, leaning against one of the glass cases. “You’re not responsible for Danielle’s death or Charlene’s either. Only Charlene’s to blame for that. She dragged you into it. And this thing with Harold? It’s not on you. I wish you hadn’t been the one to find the body, but that’s something you’re going to have to deal with.”

  “Can’t help it. It’s just… I went for years without this much death.” It was a hard admission, but the murder and violence was taking a toll on him. “It’s one thing to… break into places, but killing someone? I mean, I’ve seen dead bodies before. Most carnies don’t… they don’t go to doctors, and it’s not like I haven’t found someone in their trailer. It’s how life is there. And shit, it’s a hard life. People hurt each other—even kill each other—but this, right after Charlene and everything she did? I don’t know how to deal with it.”

  “Charlene… all of that? That was betrayal. I’m not saying she deserved what happened, but if you knock on Death’s door, chances are, he’s going to answer.” Crossing his arms over his chest, Dante gave Rook a slight heart-pounding smile. “I’m glad you survived it, and I’m thankful we came out of that, but if you’ve gotten yourself into the middle of something now, we’ll deal with that too, querido. This time, though, you tell me everything that’s going on. Okay?”

  “Yeah, okay,” Rook agreed. “Mostly I’m pissed off about Sadonna getting arrested, because now I’m wondering what the hell is going on. Not going to lie to you, I was kicking around the idea of breaking into the house to get the statue, but she’s the one who came to me with the codes. Harold pissed her off about something, and she wanted to get back at him. I was the easiest way she could do that.”

  “Did you tell Vicks
that?”

  “No, but Alex did. He knew I was going in, because Sadonna slipped me the alarm codes. It’s probably why Vicks tagged her.” He chewed on the idea for a bit, turning it over in his head. “I fucking shut down, Dante. I sat down in that seat and everything just… I stonewalled.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell Vicks the truth?” The reproach was a soft one, but there was a bit of steel in Dante’s words, a gentle reminder Rook strayed from the straight-and-narrow path he’d put himself on. “If Sadonna gave you the codes, he should know about that. It would clear you.”

  “Habit,” he confessed. “I’m not saying it’s right, but damn, those habits are hard to break. Because shit, Dante, he sat me down, and all my brain just started screaming to shut him down, dodge it, and get the hell out.” As much as he’d wanted to shed those instincts, they hit hard and fast. The smell of a cop house, with its bitterness and unwashed dregs, evoked a flight response Rook couldn’t seem to fight. “Now Harold’s dead, the two of us are in Vicks’s crosshairs because he’s got no where else to look, and I don’t know if Archie’s going to help her get out. Me and Alex, sure. We’re his to the bone, but Sadonna? He might let her twist in the wind, and that doesn’t sit right with me.”

  “I want to know who was there in the room when you got there. If Harold was knifed earlier, then who knocked you down?” Dante shifted, a rivet on his jeans tapping the glass. “Vicks didn’t believe you. That tells me he’s not going to look hard for the real killer. You’re going to have to go back and tell him the whole story, starting with Sadonna suggesting you break in.”

  “I can’t let Sadonna go down for this, Montoya.” He shook his head, not liking the feel of guilt weighing his chest down. “It’s not right. Someone else wanted Harold dead. Everything was still in the house. The safes weren’t touched. Hell, even the damned silver was still lying on the counter, covered in dried food. It wouldn’t have taken that long to shove a lot of that into a bag and take off.”