Immortality Is the Suck
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eye.
“Yeah.” Peter leaned over and studied my neck closely. Touching it with
the pads of his fingers. “Not even a scar,” he breathed.
For a guy who'd drunk a full bottle of bourbon and hadn't bathed yet,
Peter smelled really good. He looked up at me.
I grinned.
And then he punched me in the mouth.
I fell over the arm of the chair I was in and crashed across a magazine
rack, more surprised than hurt.
“You asshole,” he said, standing over me and jabbing that finger again.
I touched the corner of my mouth with the back of my hand and didn't
answer. He was right.
“What kind of bullshit are you into now, Adam?”
“Me?” How did this become my fault?
“What were you doing in that warehouse?”
“Hey, I was supposed to meet a guy. What were you doing there?”
“Watching you stage your own death, you bastard. Tell me this, did you
know I'd be the one on the scene or was it just my good luck?”
“Peter, I didn't stage anything. Somebody wanted me dead.”
“Why doesn't that surprise me?” If I told Peter how sexy he looked when he
was pissed off he'd deck me again. So I kept my stupid mouth shut and tried to
look innocent. I must not have pulled it off because he just looked more
irritated and said, “Last week, we found a Mexican Mafia-associated dealer
dead. Two puncture wounds to the throat, just like you, as it happens.”
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45
My face must have registered something because he narrowed his eyes.
“What?”
“It's a very long story, Peter. Who was the dealer?”
“Paolo Spence.”
“I thought ICE picked him up a few months ago.”
Peter walked into the kitchen, letting his heels hit the wooden floorboards
like a little kid throwing a tantrum. I trailed behind him. “Is that the case you
were working with the DEA?”
Peter parked that fine ass of his on a kitchen stool and crossed his arms.
“The DEA has been building a case against the 'M' for a couple years. You knew
that, right?”
“Everyone knew,” I said. “That was the fucking problem. I wouldn't go near
that operation with a proverbial pole, and I told them so.”
“See, and I figured the only reason you might have been in that warehouse
was because you'd changed your mind and were involved in the sting.”
Hmm. This sounds like the blame is rounding the corner and coming right
at me. “You got anything to drink here, Peter?”
“How were you involved, Adam?”
I opened the refrigerator, just to have a place to hide my head. While I was
in there, I grabbed a bottle of water. He was glaring at me when I emerged. “I
might have been looking for a new distributor,” I said.
“Narcotics said they knew nothing about it. They said you were supposed
to be moving out of town. And, by the way, thanks for giving me a heads up.”
“Well, that's because I hadn't decided to go.” I studied the label on the
bottle of water. “'Smart' water? Christ, Peter, they give water an IQ now?”
“You're in a lot of trouble, Adam.”
“Sounds like.” I twisted off the top of the water. “Good thing I'm dead.” I
thought he was going to hit me again, but then he just made an exasperated
sound.
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“Why didn't you go through channels? Why didn't you talk to me? Did you
think that feigning death would solve all your problems?”
I drank some water. Weird thing was, I did expect death to solve all my
problems.
“I told you, I didn't stage anything,” I told him. “D'you know who killed
me?”
“Stop saying that,” said Peter. “Hand me that carton of orange juice, will
you?”
I did so, and a glass. “I never saw anything,” I said. “Suppose you tell me
what happened.”
“Starz was the DEA's undercover. His name was Armante,” said Peter.
“I saw that on the news. What was the deal?”
“He thought he was meeting with a distributor associated with the 'M.'”
Freeway must have told Starz he was La Eme. If he weren't already dead, I
could have killed the little rat myself. “Hey,” I said. “I was trying to do a job,
man. What's the DEA doing coming in and starting something?”
Peter shook his head. “Like I told you. We were looking into a homicide
tip. Nobody expected to see Armante there. And we were as surprised as you
were when those guys showed up.”
“Nobody was as surprised as I was,” I told him. “What guys?”
“The ones that killed you.” He winced. “Now you've got me doing it.”
“Who were they?”
He drank his orange juice. “A known dealer named Richie Ortiz. Mexican
Mafia. He's dead. We haven't ID'd the other guy. He got away.”
So Ortiz was the stiff I'd battled in the morgue. “What'd the other guy look
like?”
He sighed. “Stan saw him. I was distracted.” A bleak expression passed
over his face, which made me think of him crying over me in that warehouse.
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47
“I've got the file back at the office. The chief thought, under the circumstances,
it'd be best if I went home for a few days and let someone else handle things.”
“Huh,” was all I could think of to say.
“How'd you do it, Adam?”
“I didn't.” I shrugged. “I just…”
“Why me, you asshole? Did you even think, for a minute, how I'd feel?”
“I swear, Peter, I was just as surprised as you were.”
“Surprised? Is that the word for it? Surprised?” Peter smacked the counter
with the palm of his hand, rose, and exited down the hallway to the bathroom,
angry heels thunking.
Pretty soon I heard the shower running. By this time the smell and sight
of him had got me thinking about things in no way related to the current
weirdness, so I just tippy-toed into the bathroom where I was going to slide into
the shower with him, but then I saw myself. Or rather, did not see myself, in
the bathroom mirror, again.
“Peter, check this out.”
His wet head poked out and he glared at me. Long black eyelashes like
stars above his dark blue eyes. But then he looked where I was pointing and
then he almost slipped and fell in the shower. “What the fuck?”
“See, this is what I've been talking about.” I made him stand in front of me
and I wrapped my arms around him and I could see the impression of my arm
in his wet chest hair, but I couldn't see me. While I was back there I did a little
bump and grind against his ass.
But Peter just shoved me away and, with his serious face on, snatched up
a towel, and rubbed himself dry. “Brush your teeth, why don't you, Adam,” he
said. “Your breath stinks.”
Nice.
When I came back out, Peter was picking up his living room. He'd pulled
on a “Kings Hockey” T-shirt over the boxers.
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“Some of your clothes are in the closet,” he said. “I tossed them on the
bed.”
Over the years, you know, st
uff gets left. A pair of jeans with a hole in one
knee and an old sweatshirt with paint on it. But it felt good to get into my own
clothes.
When I came back into the kitchen he was sitting at the dinette table,
scooping the photographs back into the box. I saw some newspaper articles in
the mess too. That picture of me with the mayor. An older one I didn't even
know he'd seen, of me in my Marine uniform.
“What the hell were you doing with those?” I asked. Damn, had I ever been
that young?
He clapped the cover on the box, and walked across the room to shove it
onto a shelf in the closet. “I'm calling this in right now.”
“Sure.”
I watched him call the station on his cell phone. I wasn't sure what to
expect.
“Stan,” he said. Stan was Peter's partner. But before Peter could get a
word in, it appeared that Stan had something to tell Peter, and I figured from
the way Peter listened, and then the way he looked at me, that Stan was telling
him that a certain corpse was missing and that another corpse was a bloody
mess.
“I'm coming in,” said Peter. It appeared that Stan argued with him about
this. “You're crazy if you think I'm going to sit at home,” Peter told him. And
hung up. He looked at me.
“It was self-defense,” I told him.
“You tore apart a morgue defending yourself from a corpse?”
“He wasn't a corpse when he attacked me!”
“Well, he is now.” Peter pocketed his cell phone, frowning thoughtfully.
“See, Peter? Something's not right.”
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49
Poor Peter. He must wonder sometimes, what he's done to deserve a friend
like me. “I should have told Stan that you're standing right here in my kitchen,”
he said.
“You should have,” I agreed. “Why didn't you?”
He just rubbed his neck and said, “Fucking hell, Adam.”
This is obviously not the time to bring up the dead CI I found while he was
sleeping. Or the cartons of blood still in the trunk of Peter's Cadillac. “Whoever
set me up thinks I'm dead,” I told him. “We should let them keep thinking
that.”
He rubbed his chin. “Don't forget, they set up both you and Armante.”
“What do a DEA agent and I have in common?”
The right answer, of course, was “drugs,” but I saw the way Peter looked
at me and knew he was coming up with a slightly more creative answer. So I
preempted him quickly. “Who do you know in the DEA?”
“Stan has a connection or two,” said Peter.
Good old Stan. The last thing in the world I wanted was to work with him.
“Does he have them on speed dial?” I asked him. “I do. Which is why I
need my cell phone. And my bike. Peter, this is a Vice case, with a few dead
bodies involved, not…”
“A few dead bodies?” he said.
“Not a Homicide case,” I finished. “What are the chances Stan's
connections will give him everything they know about Armante's cases?”
He looked at me. The chances were slim to none. The various agencies
were very possessive of information, very distrustful, and they became even
more so when one of their own got killed. “What do you suggest?”
“Let me ask around. If it was the Mongols they'll be bragging about it.
Somebody will be taking credit.” I couldn't help it, I was checking him out
obviously now. That T-shirt was so old, it was worn through, and had shrunk
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A. M. Riley
up so that every time he moved his arm, I could see the skin between it and the
top of Peter's boxers.
And he'd been checking me out too. It was habit, I told myself. We weren't
used to being around each other this much without sex. So, these old jeans I
was wearing were paper-thin, and twice I'd seen his eyes wander down below
my waistband. “I'm an idiot maybe, Peter. But I wasn't up to anything shady.”
Well, not quite. I'd been killed before I could have been.
“Not yet,” he said, like he could read my mind. Which, Christ, he probably
could after all these years.
I grinned. “I'm a bad, bad man, Peter, and you're better off without me.”
“Prick.”
“Absolutely.”
“Big dick.”
I moved in a little closer. “You ought to know.”
His eyes read me. He had that scared look on his face he got around me
sometimes. “Fucker,” he whispered.
I could smell him again. He had a cinnamon-type smell. Spicy and sweet.
And when I leaned down and kissed him, he tasted sweet too. I grabbed hold of
him with both hands, pressing him against one of the walls so I could get my
tongue into his mouth and just tasted him a bit.
He made a sound deep in his throat and wrapped both his arms around
me. He had hold of me, I had hold of him, and we were grinding and humping
there against the wall. I grabbed his ass and tried to lift him so I could rub my
cock up against his.
Now I've got a good two inches and twenty pounds on Peter, but he's no
twinkie. I lifted him like he was just a kid. The air left his lungs as I slammed
him into the wall and just started humping him right there.
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51
It felt so fucking good. His cock was hard and wet, leaking through those
boxers. And my cock was ready, my balls full and needing to shoot, just like
they always did with Peter.
Peter made some kind of noise, I don't know if it was good or bad, because
I pushed his boxers out of the way and dropped to my knees.
Oh man, Peter's cock tasted great.
He was screaming at me, pulling tufts of my hair out maybe, when he
came. I licked my lips and looked up at him and when he swatted at me, he
didn't look like he really meant it.
“Stupid.”
“Oh, right, Peter, because you are such a whore. Who have you had sex
with besides me?”
It was the wrong question. His orgasm smile froze and just deflated on his
face. He jerked his boxers up. “You okay?”
“I could use some help.”
He helped me stand and gave me an appraising look. My dick was trying
to pop through the denim of my jeans. A dark spot starting to appear there.
Peter opened my jeans and proceeded to jerk me off, his expression exactly
like a washerwoman scrubbing clothes in a tub.
“Jesus, Peter, at least let me lie down.”
“Come on.” He held out his hand and led me to the bedroom. Once there, I
lay down on the bed, pushed my jeans off entirely and spread my legs. I was
dark and wet and my dick stood up from my swollen balls. I could see Peter
trying not to look like he was getting into it.
“C'mon, man.” I started stroking myself, arching my hips a little. That's all
it took. He slapped my hands away and slid a condom down over my dick.
Sucked me deep and hard.
Peter's the best cocksucker in Southern California. Based on my own
personal and fairly extensive research.
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I saw stars, as they say. He didn't even stay to give me a kiss on the
cheek, though. Just ju
mped up, went to the closet, and brought out a pair of
slacks. “I've got to get in to work.”
“What are you going to tell good old Stan?”
The corners of his mouth turned down. “He's there trying to sort out your
mess. Don't you think he has a right to know what's going on?”
“We don't know it's my mess,” I protested. “And what exactly is going on?”
He strung his belt through the loops, hard enough that the leather made a
snapping noise as he did so. He was still mad. I wasn't sure exactly why at that
point. “I'm going to take a leap of faith and assume that this isn't some
elaborate plan on your part to fool the LAPD, Adam.”
“I appreciate that.”
“I'm going to go down there and find out what I can about what's going on.
Then I'll come back here and we'll figure out the best way to handle this.”
“Fair enough.”
He looked at me, eyes narrowed. “You're being very agreeable.”
“I can be agreeable.”
He didn't even bother to argue with what he would undoubtedly assert
was a ridiculous statement. I followed him down the hallway and watched as
he brushed his teeth, spitting into the sink with what seemed unnecessary
ferocity. Then he stomped to the front door, where he strapped on his gun,
shoved his arms into his suit jacket, and opened the door. “Stay put,” he said.
“We'll talk when I get back.”
“See if you can get my cell phone?” I said. “And if my bike is in
impound…”
But Peter ignored me, grabbing up the keys to his Mustang and slamming
the door behind him.
Whatever he was mad about, I figured Peter wasn't forgiving me any time
soon.
Immortality is the Suck
53
Chapter Seven
What followed was one helluva night. And this is coming from me, who's
been through more bad nights than you can count.
The minute I saw the lights of Peter's Mustang sweep over the buildings at
the end of the block as the car turned onto Lincoln, headed toward the freeway,
I ran back to the garage and popped the trunk on the Cadillac.
I'm no doctor, but I figure blood can't sit in a hot car for too long, even in