by TG Wolff
“Busy week. Same old, same old.”
“Aw, my poor brother.” She stepped in and hugged him. “You work too hard. You need to blow off steam every now and then.”
“Yeah, well—”
“Family hug!” Yablonski’s coarse shout was followed by a bone-crushing embrace.
“Ow! Fuck! Get off me you Neanderthal.”
“Zeus! Language.” His sister’s laughter ruined the scolding. “The girls.”
“This is interesting.” Aurora’s voice came behind. “What’s going on?”
“Family hug,” Yablonski said. “Want in?”
The heavy arms lifted and were replaced with softer forms. Aurora on his right. Erin on his left.
Another weight fell against them. This one smelled of gardenias. “And people talk about me,” his mother said. “You people are the crazy ones. Jesus, you need a bigger kitchen.”
After the roast had been reduced to scraps and Rhia was flying around the house acting out her butterfly makeup, Cruz set dessert on the table and cornered Yablonski about yesterday.
“I’m not supposed to say anything.” Then Yablonski began. Everyone, it seemed, took a turn being pissed at the situation. Erin pressed her fork into the plate so hard, it sounded like claws on a blackboard.
“Does my mother think there’s a case against you?” Aurora asked.
Yablonski pushed his plate away, still half a slice of pie on it. “She seemed baffled why this would be a question, let alone elevated to the FBI.”
“Somebody got to them.” Erin spat out the answer, her lips twisted in a snarl. “Some ball-less piece of shit is whispering garbage and some brainless piece of shit is listening.”
Yablonski barked out a laugh, wrapping an arm around her neck, his mood lightened back to normal. “The truck I used was impounded as evidence and someone put a rush order on the cocktail Sasha overdosed on. Catherine said she was able to get the sample split and is sending it to her own people for testing. She’s hoping for results tomorrow. I don’t know what anyone thinks it will show.”
Cruz held up his hand, the international symbol for stop. “You found drugs in the truck. Did you search for anymore? I bet there was more. I’ll bet you a thousand dollars that’s what it is.”
“Imaginary dollars,” Aurora said hastily.
Yablonski scratched his bald head. “That would make sense. They would want to see if the junk in the truck was the same the junk that killed Sasha. I can’t think about this anymore. It’ll drive me crazy.”
The house settled along traditional lines. Cruz, Tony, and Yablonski had the living room, television, and a fleet of sporting events. Aurora, Mari, Erin and his mother were up in her studio, after Cruz and Yablonski carried Aurora’s old couch up. The girls danced between the two.
Afternoon dimmed, becoming evening. His sister was the first to leave. Correction, to try to leave. She, Aurora, and Erin seemed incapable of saying goodbye.
“Mari,” Cruz said. “Rhia looks thirty seconds away from taking her boots back off.”
“Right. Gabi, Rhia, did you give everyone hugs and kisses?”
“Ten minutes ago, Mom.” Gabi rolled her eyes. “Can we go? Dad went out an hour ago and it’s hot inside with my coat on.”
The back door closed firmly as Yablonski shrugged into his coat. “We’re going to hit it, too, Cruzie. Thanks for feeding us.”
Erin hugged Aurora. “Are you sure you don’t need anything for dinner on Tuesday?”
“Nope. I have it all under control. Just come hungry.” When a shadow of suspicion passed across Yablonski’s face, Aurora imitated Gabi, rolling her eyes. “If it’s that bad, I’ll order pizza. Okay?”
“Okay, but, you know. I’m not worried.”
Aurora wrapped her arms around his thick torso and pressed her head to his chest. “Try not to worry about the FBI. You have all of us behind you. We know it’s BS. My mom will mop the floor with those overloaded, underpaid lawyers.”
“Listen to you with the trash talk.” Yablonski’s voice hit an octave higher than usual. As soon as Aurora stepped back, another woman filled his arms.
“I call the feebies for you, set them straight,” Vanessa De La Cruz said, her hands on Yablonski’s cheeks.
Yablonski glanced at Cruz, the cue for a translation.
“The FBI,” Cruz said. “Mom, you don’t have to do that. Aurora’s mother will handle it.”
“Si, she handles the law. I handle anyone stupid enough to accuse my babies of breaking it. You,” she pointed at Cruz, “keep me away last time. Now, I be there.”
And that’s how you laid it down.
“Mom, maybe you didn’t notice, but Yablonski isn’t your baby. He’s white.”
“So, he’s a flour tortilla, it no make a difference.”
Cruz couldn’t contain the laughter at his friend’s expense. Both knew it wouldn’t be long before “flour tortilla” was a thang.
His mother pulled Yablonski down until she could kiss his forehead. “I take care of everything. Only thing you worry about is making babies with your nurse. Then maybe you teach these two something, huh? Yes?”
“Anything for you, Mrs. De La Cruz. Right, Erin?”
His fiancée’s mouth hung open. “I, uh, well.” She glanced at her phone. “Wow. Look at the time. We need to go, Matt. Now.”
Under Cruz’s arm, Aurora shook with laughter. “It’s fun when she does it to someone else.”
“I going, too,” his mother said, pulling on her coat. “A friend is coming to visit this evening. I need to clean.”
“Have fun with your friend.” Aurora hugged his mother, genuine affection in the body language. With her mother, it was a peck on the cheek. Personal, but not emotional. With Vanessa De La Cruz, she bent down and wrapped her arms around the smaller woman, merging personal spaces. “See you Tuesday.”
“Yes. I’ll bring tortillas.”
“You don’t have to bring anything,” Aurora said quickly.
“Flour tortillas,” Cruz said. “That’s all I want for my birthday. A stack of flour tortillas.” He walked her to the door, then hugged and kissed her. “Be careful driving.”
He watched as she carefully walked down the driveway to her car. His mother worked too hard with too little to show for it. He’d pick up flowers next Sunday, something pretty to brighten her day. Once the headlights started to fade, he closed the door and went to find Aurora.
“Another successful Sunday dinner,” she said, washing the last of the dishes. “I think I’m going up to paint for a while. You mind?”
“No. Putting in a few hours will give me a jump on tomorrow. I fell behind doing my job and Montoya’s.”
“Hmm. Commander De La Cruz. It has a nice ring.” She rose to her toes, planted a kiss on his mouth and shoved the dish towel into his hands. “I washed, you dry, Commander.”
Two hours later, the dishes were dried and put away and Cruz had beat his emails down to manageable, affording the time to dissect the lab report on the cocktail injected into Sophie DeMusa’s IV. The party crasher was made up of fentanyl, heroin, and a third component expressed as a chemical formula. The lab technician’s handwritten note said the element was very similar to vanilla bean extract, and she would perform follow up testing to verify.
A search on vanilla found it once was used medicinally for fevers, intestinal issues, and low sex drive. And, news to no one, it made food taste better. If pressing it into a pill or blotting it on paper, vanilla could improve the taste, possibly the smell, increase the appeal. But what happened when vanilla was injected? He didn’t know.
His truck keys landed on his desk. He absently picked them up.
“It’s Sunday night. Oscar is waiting,” Aurora said.
And he dropped them again. “Not goin’.” He raised his gaze, then forgot he was pissed. Aurora wore shorts, a bra, and paint. “You got a spot on you. Let me help you with that.”
&nb
sp; “After you get back from dinner with Oscar.”
He stared at her and the ornery set of her mouth. “Bollier screwed up, Aurora. Not me. He’s lied to me for years. He knows everything about my life, about our life—”
“God, I hope you’re exaggerating.”
“—and he hides not only that he’s gay, but he has a partner. What the fuck? How low do I rank on his give-a-shit scale that he doesn’t tell me?”
She slid onto his lap, draping an arm around his neck, arching to look at his face. “Yes, Oscar screwed up. He doesn’t do it often and he doesn’t do it well.” Her brows pressed together. “Or he does it very well, depending on your point of view. The point is, he knows how to fix bodies and bones but is clueless when it comes to emotions. You mean a lot to him.”
“Maybe,” he said, finding the soft curve of her breast intriguing. Kissable. Bitable. “Aurora…”
“Don’t let him get away with throwing you away.” She swiped the keys off the desk and shoved them into his palm. “I’ll be waiting for you. After.”
He drove too fast, but that’s what happened when you were cock blocked by a gay man who didn’t respect you enough to tell you he’s a gay man with a partner. He braced his feet on the floor, adjusted his jeans, trying to find some room. It was Bollier’s fault and if he thought he was going to get out of this without some serious butt kissing, he was wrong. W-R-O-N-G. And that made him, Cruz, R-I-G-H-T. Period. End of discussion, if there were a discussion, which there wasn’t going to be, because he was right.
He stepped into the dark restaurant, waiting for his eyes to adjust because he was not giving any advantage to his lying ass AA sponsor. Finding him was easy. Same table as every other week. The SOB looked bored with his dinner. That’s what happened when you only ordered one of three entrees. There was misery in the gaze that met his. Seeing it, knowing Aurora was right, fizzled out his tirade. “It wouldn’t kill you to try something different.”
“You don’t know that.” He stared as Cruz yanked out the opposite chair and fell into it. “I didn’t think you would show.”
“I didn’t want to come. Damn, it feels like we just did this.”
“We did. Then, I had Aurora to thank for you showing.”
“Same this time. She blackmailed me.”
Bollier’s smile was slow brewing. “Sex?”
If he thought this would blow over quick and easy, he was, again, W-R-O-N-G. “Do you think anything else would have gotten me here? What the fuck is with the games lately? And the lies. I’m sick of it. When are you going to grow up and treat me like a real friend?”
“As soon as you take off those goddammed rose-colored glasses and see me as a real person.”
A laugh burst out, one filled with insult and outrage. “I have never seen you as anything but what you are. A fucking white bread doc atop the white bread food chain.”
“You can lie to yourself until your face is as blue as your balls, but you can’t lie to me. You hero worship me.”
“Ha!” At his bark, heads turned their way. He didn’t give a rat’s ass. “I don’t hero worship you. You’re rude, harsh, and arrogant.”
“That was you the day we met, if you ignore your face doing an imitation of sausage. I was comfortable in my own skin, accepting the hand I’d been dealt, and living outside a bottle. All things you wanted in your life.”
It was fucking annoying when a guy worked up a head of steam for a no-holds-barred argument and the dickhead you’re arguing with made a point so true, you couldn’t even lie about it. “I’m not arrogant, wasn’t arrogant.”
Bollier sat back. “Maybe that was me.” He cut a bite of steak, waved the fork in a circle. “Nobody’s perfect.”
The waiter approached now, Cruz’s usual coffee on a tray.
“Smart waiting until we were done shouting,” Cruz said, smiling at the waiter and surprised to find he meant it.
“You were arguing? I must have missed it.” The sheepish grin was a nice accent to the sarcasm.
“Since I won, Dr. Bollier will be buying my dinner again. I’ll have the surf-and-turf. Medium-rare on the steak. Load everything that can be loaded.”
The waiter raised a brow to Bollier, who answered with a curt nod.
“Tell me about Jonathan.”
Bollier’s entire demeanor changed. His shoulders eased, his posture relaxed, and he smiled. His expression was tender, loving. Cruz imagined his own expression was similar when asked about Aurora. “We met in the nineteen nineties, around the height of the AIDS epidemic. Jonathan was active in the gay community, he is always active in something.” Bollier’s voice dropped for the last part, the same way Cruz’s did talking about Aurora’s cooking. “The man barely has time to sleep with all of his causes. Back then, AIDS took all his time. He came into the hospital frequently with people he helped care for. Jonathan had no medical training, but he took better care of those men than most doctors.”
“Yourself excepted?”
“I was still in my idealistic phase. AIDS was the new leprosy. I saw people turned away. People—and doctors and nurses are people—were afraid. But this neatly dressed young man, in his button-down shirts and endless supply of energy, he wasn’t. They were ill, and he didn’t care why. I decided he was right, so I treated them.”
“You being gay had nothing to do with it?”
He shook his head slowly. “I didn’t know. I hadn’t come out, even to myself. I thought I was dedicated and disciplined, focused on my career. The few women I’d been with couldn’t hold my attention. If I had feelings for men before then, I hadn’t recognized it as more than,” he waved his fork as he searched for the word, “appreciation. I was a scientist, admiring a specimen.”
“So, you and Jonathan?”
“He knew what I was within weeks of knowing each other.” Bollier’s brows pressed down, his expression sheepish. “He made the mistake of telling me.”
This time, Cruz’s laugh held humor at his friend’s expense. “Rude, harsh, and arrogant. I stand behind my words. How long did it take you to realize you were gay?”
“It was maybe another year before I accepted I was different than other men, but I did not fit the nineties’ picture of a gay man. I was something…else, I guess. Not straight, not gay. I was a man without a country. It was a lonely time. I started drinking, the bottle didn’t care what I was.
“I had tried to be with women, tried to be the man everyone wanted me to be. I had female friends and colleagues, people I truly liked and respected. Early two thousands, I met a woman who was perfect for me. Same interests, same tastes, same hobbies. If my body and my heart weren’t into it, at least my intellect was satisfied. We were engaged. One day, we were picking out china patterns.” He snarled with distaste at the idea of china. “Who is in the same store buying a gift but Jonathan Fisher. He and I met for lunch the next day and the day after that. I knew then, I couldn’t do it. Not to her, not to me. I broke the engagement. It was a quiet breakup. What woman wants it known her fiancé was gay. My drinking increased after I broke the engagement.”
Cruz lifted his arms for the succulent platter to be set in front of him.
“You can’t possibly eat all of that.”
“Watch me.” He cut the steak, loading his fork with meat and potato. “You weren’t with Jonathan at that point?”
“No. We were friends, maybe the first friend I let know the real me. Being more than friends wasn’t part of either of our plans. He had just started his business and he still had his committees. I was climbing the ladder at work and was sick and tired of trying to figure out who I was supposed to be. He came over one night, I had been drinking more than usual, and I kissed him.” A wry snort escaped. “The first time I kissed a man and I was too drunk to remember. He reminded me the next day when he found me sleeping in my bathtub. Jonathan has a temper with a fuse a mile long, but it’s attached to a nuclear bomb.”
“He detonate
d on your ass.”
“Oh, yes. I still have the scar.” He lifted his hair to reveal a white scar high on his forehead. “He yelled and threw the empty bottles at me. You know what it’s like to try to dodge glass when your head feels like an elephant kicked it?”
“Yeah, actually, I do.”
“Then he kissed me. That one, I remember to this day. He told me if I wanted him, I could have him, but I had to clean myself up. He didn’t wallow in shit.”
Cruz grinned. “He said that?”
“Word for word. I asked him to dinner a year later, on my one-year anniversary.”
“Answer me this: as important as he is to you, why didn’t you talk about him? You knew about Aurora from our second date. I can’t imagine not telling you about her. Why didn’t you talk about Jonathan?”
Bollier looked uncomfortable for the first time since they’d started the conversation. “If I were a psychologist, I would say I had trained myself to treat solitude as my norm. Even ten years later, I have trouble.” His head dropped, humble in the light of defeat. “It isn’t you, Jesus. And it isn’t Jonathan. It’s me.”
The glasses were off, and maybe they had been rose-colored. He liked the look of this Bollier ten times better than the one he’d come to bitch out. “Bring Jonathan on Tuesday.” It was fun to see the color drain out of Bollier’s face. “Bring him to my birthday dinner.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“It’s a fucking brilliant idea. You call him, or I will. I have his number.” He popped his last piece of butter-soaked lobster into his mouth.
Bollier nodded curtly, then changed the subject. “Have you made any progress on Sophie’s case?”
Chapter Thirteen
Cruz sat at the Monday morning meeting far from the head of the table, happy to have Montoya back at the helm. Montoya’s cheeks were sharper, making him look more imposing. The ten pounds desk duty had put on the stomach bug had taken back off.