by Amy Lane
Yeah, he’d heard that from other people. “It’s as docile as a pony until it turns into a dragon,” he said mildly.
“Yes, well, so is oxy.” Galen let out a sigh. “Which I’d give my left nut for right now, but I shall valiantly make do with ibuprofen instead.”
“Do you need a soda or water for that?” Jackson asked, as he heard the rattle of pills in plastic behind him.
“That would be great, thank you.”
“Henry, take a right up on L. There’s a teriyaki chicken place here, and I can run in and get us sodas.”
“Think there will be parking?”
“If not, there’s a bank nearby—they’re not full often.”
“Let us all go in and get some food,” Galen said. “My treat. I’ll bring John some takeout, and we can sit in the air-conditioning so Jackson can continue his fascinating discussion of why it’s important that our friend Scott was no longer selling coke.”
FIFTEEN MINUTES later, they were sitting at the I-<3-Teriyaki, and Galen was looking around the area with interest. “So there’s a dance club and a pizza place,” he said, checking out the block. “And is that a library?”
“It’s an LGBTQ library,” Jackson said. “Small but active. This is part of Sacramento’s Rainbow District. We have a decent Pride parade every year and a couple events.”
Henry’s eyes widened, and a faint look of horror dawned on his face.
Jackson and Galen both breathed out of their noses in a very similar-sounding sigh.
“Problem there, Henry?” Jackson baited, watching Henry’s reaction as two women in their forties came in, holding hands. They were both dressed semiprofessionally, and if Jackson had to guess, he’d say they worked nearby and were coming in for lunch.
“I’m sorry,” Henry said, sounding unexpectedly sincere. “My whole life, I was supposed to think one way. It doesn’t matter that it’s my brother, or… or anyone I know. Thinking about it the other way is hard. I get that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done, but every time I hear you talk about my brother and his… his husband or a girl and her wife, I hear my father’s voice in my head, and it’s… it’s not saying good shit.”
“Well, yeah, Henry,” Jackson said, keeping his voice as patient as he could. “I get your old man’s voice in your head might be a giant fucking distraction from being a decent human being. But what does your voice say, and when do you get to listen to it?”
To Jackson’s complete surprise and horror, Henry’s lower lip wobbled. He got hold of it almost immediately, but it wobbled, and his entire tough asshole façade threatened to come crumbling down. Before Jackson could say anything, though, Henry took a deep breath and stood.
“I’m going to get more soda,” he said, heading for the fountain. Jackson and Galen let him go.
“Well, knock me over with a feather,” Galen said, whistling softly. “That was damned near a miracle. Nobody told me you walked on the side of the angels, Mr. Rivers. I am quite impressed.”
Jackson chuffed out a breath. “Well, don’t be. If I can’t get him to crack and stop acting so fucking guilty, he’s going to be tried and convicted before I can figure out what his damned secret is.”
Henry stalked back before Galen could reply, but Jackson got the distinct impression that Galen had been going to spill. It was probably just as well he hadn’t. Confession was good for the soul. If Galen had gossiped, Henry’d be pissed. If he told Jackson and realized the world didn’t come to an end, well, that would be slightly better.
“We ready to go?” Henry asked bluntly.
Galen and Jackson traded glances. “I’m still finishing my chicken,” Galen said calmly.
“I was thinking of getting some fro-yo from the place next door,” Jackson said. It sold Hawaiian ice and ice cream bars too. “Galen, you want some?”
Galen smiled, catlike. “Of course.”
They both looked at Henry, and Jackson saw the terrible conundrum. It was hot as balls outside, and frozen yogurt or Hawaiian ice would go down mighty sweetly. But it was hard to maintain a bitchier-than-thou front when you were eating fro-yo. No two ways about it.
“I’ll go look,” Henry muttered, obviously aware that anything else sounded childish and petulant, and he really had no place to pout.
“What shall I bring you back?” Jackson asked Galen.
“Mm… Hawaiian ice, cherry.” He grinned, obviously delighted, and Jackson felt his liking for the man increase. “Too bad we’re so far away from the shop, or I’d bring John some.”
“I’ll see if I can get them to package some on ice,” Jackson told him.
“Frozen yogurt, chocolate and vanilla mixed,” Galen replied promptly, and Jackson nodded, then took off.
He wondered if he’d know Ellery’s order quite so promptly.
“Strawberry,” he murmured on the way into the shop. “With strawberries, if they had them.”
“Is that what you’re getting?”
Jackson had almost forgotten about Henry. “No. That’s what I’d get Ellery if we were heading that way. But we’re not. It was like a test. I was just thinking that Galen knew John’s order, that’s all. It was cute.”
Henry looked stricken, a sudden, unexpected pain twisting his handsome features. “Oreo,” he whispered. “Chocolate topping.”
He wasn’t talking about his own order, obviously.
“Good for you,” Jackson praised, hoping to get a smile. “You must be a good boyfriend.”
And Henry’s face closed down like a steel trap. “I’m not a good anything.” He shook his head. “I’m not in the mood for this. I’ll be waiting in the car.”
“C’mon, Henry!” Jackson called to his retreating back. “If you don’t tell me what you want, I’ll get you something blue!”
Henry paused at the doorway and swore softly to himself. “Peach freezy,” he growled, then turned around to stand next to Jackson in line. “But I don’t want to fucking talk about it.”
“Deal.”
Ten minutes later, they were all back in the car. The rest of the drive was actually pleasant. Galen chatted a little about hopefully passing the bar exam and how excited he was to be practicing law again.
“Are you going to open a practice or just work for Johnnies on retainer?” Jackson asked.
“John actually has a semidecent lawyer on retainer,” Galen told him. “Not that I haven’t been called in a few times. But his first guy is a former model, and John, being John, feels responsible.”
“Gotcha,” Jackson said. “Well, I’m sure you’ll find a place to land.”
“Indeed,” Galen said, sounding speculative. “Can you tell me something? Why did it matter what kind of drugs Mr. Sampson was selling?”
Oh, the guy was sharp.
“Well, coke is one supplier, pills are another. Coke is imported from down south, usually passing through a port, and gets distributed once it gets here. Of course, all of this was made easier by the US government, who started the process a few years ago. But since the Colombian government has started to pay their farmers to grow food and not cocaine, it’s slowed down a little.”
“What about all them illegals, hauling shit up in their assholes?” Henry asked crudely, and Galen let out a frustrated gasp.
“That’s not really happening all that much,” Jackson told him crisply. “I know the news likes to make it sound like every person crossing the border shits cocaine, but in reality, it’s shipped in bulk through the ports. It has nothing to do with people fleeing from war. And I’m pretty sure the math bears me out on this.”
He tried to keep his voice measured and not to have a kneejerk reaction to Henry’s ignorance. How was this kid going to learn if Jackson jumped down his throat?
Henry grunted. “I did not know that,” he said after a moment. “What do you think it means that he changed his product?”
“I think it means he got a different source. If he’s selling pills, that’s coming from a shady doctor or a stolen prescr
iption book or a pharmacist with bad morals and a bad habit. The thing is, the violence is going to come from a different place too. Cocaine has a subterranean supply structure. There’s always a dealer who gets his shit from a dealer who knows the actual people importing the product. It’s a complete criminal network, and that’s shady, but it’s also traceable. Pills are different. Pills are a white-collar crime, which means somebody involved has a mantle of respectability on their shoulders. That’s a whole different rock to turn over, and it’s usually a rock that’s got somebody standing on top of it shouting, ‘Do you know who I am?’”
Galen chuckled. “You do know your scumbags, Mr. Rivers. How did you get into this business, may I ask?”
Jackson grimaced. “I was a policeman,” he said. He felt comfortable with Galen, but Henry’s derision was going to be a shitty cross to bear.
“Was?” Henry gave him the side-eye, sure, but it was a thoughtful side-eye, so Jackson went on.
“My trainer, the guy who put me through the academy, he was dirty. I was sort of a street rat. He thought he was training a partner in crime.”
“You ratted him out?” Henry’s disgust was exactly as bad as Jackson had anticipated.
“I wore a wire for months,” Jackson said, his stomach clenching just saying those words. “As it turns out, IA was crooked, and so was the DA putting the wire on me. They hired a sniper to take me and my partner out. It only half worked.”
“Oh dear God,” Galen murmured. “That’s… that’s terrible, Mr. Rivers. I’m so very glad you survived. Does that explain the scars?”
Well, he had been shirtless when they’d walked in. “Some of them,” he admitted.
“Yeah, I thought some of those looked recent,” Henry observed. “You rat anybody else out?”
“You want more details, check the papers,” Jackson snapped, done. “Does your apartment complex have a camera? Security? Anything that maybe has a recording that proves you didn’t beat up the scumbag?”
“Well, I did,” Henry reminded him. “Just not the fatal time, right?”
“Maybe just say you didn’t kill him,” Jackson advised. “And the camera, Henry, focus.”
Henry grunted. “I don’t know.”
“I’ll have Ellery ask.” Jackson took out his phone and tapped in Cameras? Just so he’d have the connection to Ellery.
God, as eager as he was not to talk to the guy, he sure could use his reassurance sometimes. Reliving his past was not his favorite.
Which got him back to the questioning. “So, Henry, about the time you did beat him up… what was that like?”
“My fist hit his face, he hit the floor,” Henry said promptly.
Ass. Hole. “Did he look good? Bad? He was scrawny, you said. Was he shirtless? Dressed in a suit? Did he have a trench coat that he kept his little baggies in? Give me some details.”
“He was wearing nice jeans and a T-shirt,” Henry conceded. “Nothing torn. He smelled like he’d had a shower, didn’t look like miles of bad road. Not homeless… but skeezy.”
“Skeezy how?”
Henry lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know. Entitled, I guess. Like he could just come in and sell to my guys and grab their asses. I mean, I know what they do for a living, but… but some of them are just, like, bright-eyed kids, you know? I mean, most of them are. They’re like hyperactive schoolkids who found out something really fun that they could do to keep out of trouble. It’s… it’s fucking weird.”
“It’s fucking human. Whatsamatter, Henry? You never get laid for the fuck of it?”
“Fuck off and fuck you!” Henry snarled.
“I guess not,” Jackson muttered. “But you were protecting your guys, and I can respect that. Did any of them see the first altercation?”
“Yeah—Lance and Billy and… and their friends Bobby and Reg were there too. I think they were going out somewhere, like to swim or something, and I heard Kiefer and McCall yelling. I ran down the stairs, and Bobby was screaming at Sampson to get out of there, and Reg was….”
An odd expression crossed Henry’s face. “Reg was in tears,” he said.
“Now that’s a damned shame.” Galen didn’t sound friendly or easygoing right now. “What did Scott say to him?”
“I’m not sure—something about Bobby, because I guess they all worked scenes together, and Bobby was standing between Scott and Reg, looking like he was going to take the guy out.”
“He could have,” Galen said. “In fact, it’s a good thing he didn’t. He’s barely off probation.”
“Who’d he hit?” Jackson asked. Maybe Bobby was another suspect?
“The cop who got in his face while he was getting his chest stitched up and his boyfriend was getting treated for a concussion. I can’t say I blame him. But that kid grew up quick. Bobby doesn’t fight anymore,” Galen said, sounding confident. “He walked out of two weeks of jail like a man who knew what mattered. Did he lay a finger on Scott?”
“No, sir,” Henry said promptly. “But he was standing in front of Reg, trying to protect him. That’s when I grabbed the guy by the back of the neck and threw him at the dumpster.”
Galen grunted. “Well done. I didn’t know you were protecting Reg. Thank you.”
Henry swallowed and looked uncomfortable. “Poor guy cried for ten minutes. It was all Bobby could do to calm him down.”
“Reg is special to all of us,” Galen said, and he was careful around the word special.
“How?”
“He’s….” Henry cleared his throat. “He’s got a….” He cleared his throat. “Dammit,” he complained. “Every way I can think to say this sounds mean. But I like the guy, and I can’t say something that sounds mean about him! Galen, help me out!”
“He’s got some cognitive issues,” Galen said, sounding matter-of-fact. “He’s a fully functioning adult, but it takes a while for him to process things. When you meet him, he’s just like a good ol’ boy, right? But you realize you have to repeat things once or twice before they stick, and if he doesn’t have a concrete task to do, he gets a little lost.”
“Wait,” Jackson said. “Reg? Like from the site?”
Galen nodded. “Yeah. His challenges are what made him so damned good at porn, actually. Every boy likes to do what feels good, and he’s a sweetheart, so he did what felt good for everyone else. Like I said, concrete goals. But he’s been helping John with promotions since last year. He’s actually pretty good at it. He’s just nice. Club owners, venues, the print guys—they all love him. They help him out when he forgets stuff, and his job gets done.”
Jackson swallowed, feeling a little more of the porn fantasy slip away. Dex and Kane were married and raising a child? Reg was trying to make a living with a disability? It just wasn’t as much fun when they were real people with real problems. But wait….
“So Bobby is the same guy….”
“Yes, I know them all by their porn names,” Henry snapped. “It’s what they call each other off set. It’s fuckin’ weird.”
Jackson chuckled. “I’m just happy to know they date each other,” he said, meaning it.
“It’s very sweet.” Galen’s voice was a dry burn on Jackson’s starry-eyed joy. “Now about Henry—what are the odds that he’s going to get picked up for questioning?”
“Pretty good,” Jackson told him. “You’ve got Ellery’s number. Make sure Henry has it. And Henry, make sure your brother and his husband have it too. Now, Henry, I’m going to tell you what I told my brother last year, when he got arrested for a crime he didn’t commit—don’t say a fucking word. The minute they read you your rights, they’ll say, ‘Do you understand these rights as I have read them to you,’ and you say, ‘Lawyer. Right now. His number’s in my phone.’”
“Won’t that make me look guilty?” Henry asked. “That’s what I don’t get. I didn’t do anything.”
“Did I not tell you about my brother?” Jackson asked irritably. “He was working a late shift in his own gas station when t
wo cops came in. He woke up with a headache, a gun by his hand, and a dead cop in front of him. The only reason the other cop didn’t take him out was that he called in the officer-involved shooting before he took out Kaden, because he wasn’t that fucking smart.”
“Oh my God,” Henry said, and Jackson felt like he’d punched the kid’s pet bunny. “Cops tried to frame him? Why did they think they could get away with it?”
“Because Kaden is Jade’s twin,” Jackson said, and let that sink in for a second. He wasn’t related by blood to Jade and Kaden, but they were the only two people from his childhood who had cared for him. He’d die for them. Ellery had made his peace with it from their very first case.
“You’d think that sort of thing only happens in the South,” Galen said softly. “That is too bad.”
“It happens everywhere.” Jackson turned his shudder into a shrug. “That’s why Ellery and I work on the defense side of things. People are people—cops and lawyers fuck up like everybody else.”
“You ever defend the guilty?” Henry asked snidely.
“Yup,” Jackson said cheerfully. “You ever seen a nineteen-year-old single mother go to jail for ten years for muling a vial of coke for the boss who writes her check?”
“No,” Henry said, the attitude fading. “Have you?”
“Not on Ellery’s watch,” Jackson said proudly. “A month’s probation, time served. If she hadn’t been a friend of a friend, they would have put her in for the full sentence. Even the guilty deserve representation. Are you guilty, Henry?”
“No.” Henry was scowling against the sun, and Jackson could tell it took a whole lot out of him to admit that. No matter what he felt he’d done in the past, he was not guilty of murder.
“Then what are you going to say when they pull you in for questioning?”
“Lawyer, Ellery Cramer, lawyer.”
“Good. Boy. Wait a minute… is this it?” Henry was pulling Galen’s—or maybe it was John’s—cream-colored sedan up in front of a set of office buildings that Jackson and Ellery passed every day. Plain, wood-paneled, painted brown, it was one of those ugly structures designed in the ’70s to look cutting edge and organic at the same time. Unless Jackson missed his guess, the offices extended in a rough hexagon, with a courtyard in the middle—he could see trees growing up from outside as Henry parked the car in the parking lot, next to a motley assortment of everything from big trucks to big SUVs to shitty little Toyotas.