by B A Black
Stepping through the marked exit door, Houston emerges into a stairwell hazy with cigarette smoke. He nearly bumps into the man standing on the landing.
“What the hell?” the man demands. “Where do you think you're going, Mars?”
Houston pulls the door shut behind him with a click and looks up into the surprised face of Halward Exeter.
Houston hesitates, uncertain why he'd find Exeter here. “I'm getting out of here.”
Before the detective can protest, Houston darts past him on the landing and down into the stairwell itself, hoping that down is the right way for out.
“Christ,” Exeter swears, darting after. “They said you'd be here a couple weeks, Mars.”
“They were wrong Houston says. “What are you doing here?”
“I got some questions for you,” Exeter says, wheezing behind Houston as he trots to keep up. “About that damn case you put me on yesterday.”
“Do the work, detective,” Houston says dismissively. “Unless your department is going to write that murder off, too.”
He turns a corner, seeing another “EXIT” sign, and feels a sudden refreshment of his determination. It seems possible to do anything, pounding head and aching body be damned. He steps outside into a wall of freezing air, and pulls the front of his ruined coat closer against his body.
“That's not what I mean,” Exeter protests. “Why did you put me on it, Mars? What were you doing out there in the first place?”
Houston takes a deep breath of freezing air, and feels it cutting through the thin dressing gown where the coat has been slit. “I put you on it because you might look at it and see more than just what he was wearing.”
“Why? Why would I?”
Houston wheels on Exeter and looks him dead in the eyes. “Because someday someone might look at your body laid out in the street and think nothing more than 'there's a dead faggot'.”
Exeter's eyes slide away under Houston's challenging gaze. He says, “You are putting me in a very precarious situation.”
“It wouldn't feel like that if you had a little integrity.”
“Integrity, hell. A guy's gotta look out for himself. I don't see you getting up and taking any blows when people pick on a sissy. I don't see you advertising that you're a homosexual.”
He has a point.
“I'm not asking you to do that. Just to work the case right,” Houston says, his ire somewhat subdued.
“You have no right.”
“I guess I don't,” Houston says. “Are you going to pass it off now that you've seen what's there?”
A moment of silence. Houston's body shudders in the cold. He smells a fresh scent of cigarette smoke and it sparks up a desire for one of his lesser vices. He pats his coat pockets and comes up with a crushed pack from the inner breast pocket. The matches, too, are ruined with blood. Houston discards the handful of ruined match stubs into the snow at his feet.
“No,” Exeter says at last. “I already took all the shit for going outside my precinct. Might as well see it through.”
“Be careful,” Houston warns. “It's connected to the Winsome case.”
“I shouldn't be surprised. You think they re-dressed this corpse, too?”
“If they did, it was in his own clothes,” Houston says. “I think the ones on Charles were from Eddie's closet. And I think his older brothers put them on him.”
Exeter swears again. “I can't even try to prove that. Those guys, those Winsome fellas, they're untouchable. The chief would have me in a sling. I got more self preservation than you do.”
“You have a job, too.”
Exeter glares at him, towering and square and angry. His big hands form into fists at his side as he looks down angrily at Houston—a bit like he'd like to hit him. He growls, “You really don't know when to quit.”
“My greatest virtue. You got the time?” He’s not sure what day it is, but he hopes it’s early enough to catch a cab out of here.
“Time for you to get a clue,” Exeter mutters, but he checks his watch anyway. “Past 1 A.M.”
“What day is it?”
“Tuesday.” Exeter pauses, then clarifies. “The ninth.”
“Can you give me a ride?”
“Your apartment's cross-town from here.”
“You can take me to Sal's place.”
Exeter eyes him like something stuck to his shoe. “You should go back inside. You look like hell. I'd say the painkillers here are better, but your pal's got a reputation.”
“I feel like hell,” Houston agrees without addressing the rest. “Are you gonna make me walk?”
Turning, Exeter walks away without further comment. He doesn't stop Houston from following after him. His car is a patrol vehicle, parked neatly between the lines in the corner of the hospital’s guest parking lot.
“You ride in the back,” he says gruffly. Houston complies, settling into the caged off back seat like a common prisoner. The car has no heat, tires grinding over the fresh snow as Exeter guides it out of the parking lot. Houston gives Sal's address by the nearest cross-streets.
“So,” Exeter says, after a tense few minutes of silence. His breath fogs out, too. Houston shivers. “You and your partner, uh...?”
It's a half question but the implication is clear enough. Houston is too tired to be outraged. If he's honest, Exeter banging on his door the previous morning is the only reason the statement—or accusation, if he considers it that way—isn't true.
“No.” Houston says. He's not sure how he feels about it given the time to consider the implications. He's not sure how Sal will feel about it. He supposes he has that conversation to look forward to in the future.
“Alright,” Exeter says. “Be that way.”
Houston doesn't see anything he can say to that. He lets the rest of the ride pass with his attention directed out the window. The world passes in a yellow blur of street lights.
It's only when Exeter lets him out at the specified location that Houston realizes Sal might not be home.
◆◆◆
Sal's uptown apartment still holds onto the doorman who has been there for as long as Houston has been aware of the place. Perhaps he is just fossilized in place, like the bones held up in museums for everyone to see. His uniform is a little shabbier these days as he stands guard in the wee hours of the morning.
Houston is subjected to a critical eye as he approaches, a long slow glance before the man recognizes him.
“Is Salvatore in?” he asks.
“Mr. Mars!” The doorman exclaims. “You're hardly dressed for the weather.”
It's a polite way of saying that he looks like he's been put out as a tramp. Not an entirely unlikely scenario for a private investigator, these days. In no mood to play the rest of this game standing outside in the cold, Houston resorts to blunt honesty.
“I got shot,” he tells the doorman. “I just got out of the h-hospital.”
The cold lends him a margin of sympathetic piteousness, cutting through the gaps in his coats to hit his skin and leave Houston shuddering and wincing. He hates showing the weakness.
When the doorman has no answer for him, Houston forges on. “Is my partner in?”
“Yes, Mr. Mars, I believe he is, but—“
Houston steps past him, reaching for the door himself.
“Mr. Mars, we have a policy,” the doorman squawks, making a half-hearted move to block him. “A dress code.”
If that's the case, Houston wonders how Sal gains admittance in the mornings when he returns.
“Listen, Mac,” Houston tells him. “You know me. I'm not a bum looking for a place to piss or a chance to steal from the trash. I've had a hell of a day. My apartment is across town and it's probably ten degrees out here.”
He pauses, before he goes completely off the rails. The doorman is doing a job he is expected to do. He gives Houston a skeptical once-over.
“If you let me in, I promise by the time I come back down I'll be as compliant with
the dress code as I can manage with a cast over one arm,” Houston assures, taking a softer tone.
“Alright, Mr. Mars, but try not to let anyone see you, please. You look a fright and my job's not as secure as it once was.”
Houston can bet.
Inside, out of the wind and cold, Houston feels an immediate relief. The building is nicer than his own, with clean foyers, though the decor calls out from a time before the war. What would have once been stately and classical now looks tired and faded—as if scrubbed one too many times, or a few too many days in the sun.
Houston passes it without a second glance, leaving the newspapers that are scattered over the table behind him screaming about bloody murder—but not his case. He steps onto the elevator. During the day, there's a boy. Now, Houston pulls the gate himself, indicates Sal's floor with a button push, and waits.
Warmth and circulation return to him quickly in the heated interior, bringing pain with them. His arm is killing him. A slow, grating, aching throb that blocks everything out until the elevator stops.
By then, Houston barely remembers why he's here. Some drug is probably burning its way out of his system. He steps into the empty hallway, making his eyes focus on the worn copper numbers affixed to each red-painted door. Normally, the color seems cheerful. Now it just assaults Houston's tired retinas, seeming to hammer directly on his brain.
He finds the right number at last—554—and he knocks firmly enough to wake Sal, but not disrupt the neighbors. He hopes, anyway. It's hard to tell. The sound seems to slam into his brain and echo around in his head.
Somewhere between the action of knocking and when Sal opens the door, Houston sits down. He's too dizzy to stand anymore. Sal swings the door open inward, dressed in only his union suit and a concerned expression.
Immediate relief floods Houston for the sight of his partner. Some of the pressing nausea passes.
“Houston,” Sal says, looking like he's about to chastise him for the foolish behavior. Instead he crouches down, eyes raking over Houston's miserable form, and he sighs. Swings the door wider.
“Come on,” he says, reaching out to help Houston to his feet.
“You look like hell,” Sal tells him, as Houston takes the few shaky steps to Sal's couch. “And I don't want to know how you got here.”
The soft cushions welcome Houston down into their depths, and he settles gratefully.
Sal brings him a blanket, clearing a few half-empty cups and plates off his coffee table. After a time sitting still, warmed beneath the blanket, Houston's head clears.
“I couldn't sit around the hospital,” he says. Sal looks out from the kitchen, dish and rag in his hands working in opposition.
“You probably should have,” Sal says. “You'll regret it when the painkillers wear off.”
“Where's Mrs. Winsome?” Houston remembers suddenly.
“She took a train east. She has family in Virginia, so she's going home to them.”
It reassures Houston some. She'll be safe there, and the brothers, if they were ever inclined to take action against her, would be satisfied as to her terror.
“The case is over,” Sal says, looking Houston in the eye, as if sensing his stubborn resolve. “We can relax.”
“We don't have an answer.”
“You have two new holes that say maybe we shouldn't have an answer. Let the police deal with the rest. They carry guns.”
“Is that the reputation you want to have? Cowards who can be intimidated into giving up?”
Sal sighs. His lower lip vanishes briefly between his teeth as he resists his first, likely angry, response. He looks down at Houston on his couch from the short distance, eyes shadowed but roiling beneath the surface. Instead of arguing further, Sal reaches out then and turns out the lights.
“Get some sleep, Hobbes,” he murmurs, disappearing into his bedroom.
◆◆◆
Houston wakes, slowly at first, in strange surroundings. Then he comes up sharply, sitting up fast enough to regret it when the shock jostles his injured arm, banging the cast against his ribs. A brief spell of intense dizziness warns Houston off of any further motion until it subsides. The nausea, at least, does not return.
“Sal?” he tries, finding his throat dry and his mouth gone sour.
When his partner doesn't appear immediately, Houston supposes he's on his own. He hasn't been in Sal's apartment for a while, but it hasn't changed from his last visit—one wall is still partially painted a brilliant turquoise, with a discarded paint can on top of a drop cloth beneath, unsettled by years of traffic and half curled around the base of the can. Most tellingly, a paintbrush encrusted with the same color of paint lies on top of the can, solidified in place just where it was discarded in the moment of decision to let the project wait.
Houston wonders how many other examples he's seen of Sal's quick-flaring and quick dying passion. His attention is a strike-anywhere match.
Houston pulls himself up off the couch cautiously with his good arm and has a look at his cast. It's solid plaster, looking none the worse for the wear. There's a bone-deep pain in his arm above the elbow that only recedes if Houston holds very still. His shoulder aches, too, and the dressings have turned an alarming shade of brown, spreading in varying shades of pink out from the center and dried into the cotton.
Just drainage, Houston reminds himself. He'd seen it dozens of times—hundreds. All it wants is a quick clean and a new bandage.
He goes in search of the first aid box in Sal's cabinet behind the mirror in the bathroom.
It contains, when Houston opens it, a pint bottle of whiskey and two rolled opium cigarettes in an old cough drops tin.
He shouldn't be surprised. Houston closes the lid, but carries the offending case with him when he goes to rouse Sal.
He taps on the door with the edge of the box resulting in a solid, resounding clunk-clunk-clunk.
“Mmm..?” Sal's voice lifts distantly from behind the door, still sleepy. Houston tries the knob —unlocked.
Sal is sprawled out and half sleeping on the mess of his bed, more tangled in his blankets than under them. He blinks dark-ringed, sleepy eyes up at Houston, showing no recognition when Houston holds up the first aid box.
“You got any real bandages and rubbing alcohol, or do I have to waste your whiskey on a bullet wound?” Houston asks, as Sal watches him in bleary incomprehension.
He answers first with a yawn, then, “Sure, I got bandages.”
Sal pries himself up slowly, lithely from the bed. Houston envies him the ease of movement. From his closet, Sal produces a brown shoebox, removing the lid to reveal the transplanted contents of the kit.
Houston considers this picture, but does not immediately remark on the eccentricity. “Will you change the bandage on my shoulder?”
“I'll make a mess out of it,” Sal protests. “You're the doctor.”
I’m hardly a doctor.
“I can't do it with just one hand, even if I could see my own shoulder well enough,” he says, then reassures Sal. “You'll do fine.”
Sal eyes him skeptically, then finally relents. “Let me have a cigarette first.”
Houston considers the tremor in his friend's hands and nods. Better he be steady for this. Sal pulls on a warm, maroon smoking jacket, and produces a package of Lucky Strikes from the pocket, gesturing for Houston to take a seat on the edge of the bed.
◆◆◆
For all his protests, Sal's hands are gentle and steady on the bandages, checking the edges to be sure the pad of gauze isn't completely stuck in place. The cigarette stays unmoving between his straight lips as he concentrates. Houston looks at this intimate early-morning picture of his partner—the unshaven chin and darkly stubbled throat. He can feel the warm, smoke-painted breath against his ear.
Houston hardly feels it when Sal pulls off the gauze pad and part of the scab over the stitches. The bullet passed through and through, cutting through flesh and glancing off bone, but doing a minimum of
damage. It oozes only fresh blood, red and thin, and Sal cleans it front and back with a serious expression.
“You're doing fine,” Houston tells him in a low tone.
Sal looks up from very close now. A half-inch of ash falls from the end of his cigarette unremarked. The edge of his mouth turns up in a faint smile. “Only because you aren't moving. Haven't I ever told you I don't like blood?”
“You were a soldier.”
“That's why I don't like it. I especially don't like seeing my own.”
Houston supposes that's as good a reason as any. He reaches out impulsively and curls his hand at the back of Sal's neck, pulling him forward to press a kiss against the crown of his head. It's gentle and affectionate, and he feels Sal relax a little.
“Should that be in a sling?” Sal asks, standing back and looking at his handiwork and Houston's cast.
“Yes,” Houston allows. “If only to keep some of the weight off my injured shoulder.
Sal considers, packing the first-aid supplies back into their shoebox haphazardly. It disappears back into the closet with him.
“Why don't you keep the booze in the shoebox?” Houston asks, examining the new, white square of bandages on his shoulder, wound over with medical tape. The job is adequate, if inexpert.
“Because when I'm fried to my gills and need medicine Sal's voice drifts out from the closet, around the sounds of rifling. “I want booze or opium. And better be faced with those options than rubbing alcohol and cotton balls.”
“And when you're not?” Houston asks, falling into the rhythm and meter of the story.
“Then I know to get the shoebox,” Sal answers, emerging from concealment with a canvas pocket of fabric—a sling, as promised.
◆◆◆
Later, redressed in Sal's overlong slacks with the cuffs turned up at the ankles, and a white dress shirt that still smells like Sal's cologne, Houston feels human again. There's a faint fuzziness to his thoughts, a sort of distance that makes getting ahold of them more difficult than expected.
Sal passes him a cup of coffee from the French press he prides himself on actually using and settles across the table from Houston.