by Gregory Ashe
North dressed. He went downstairs and had toast with the cold coffee that Tuck had left in the pot. His brain churned through ideas.
From the very beginning, this case had been full of dead ends. Mark Sevcik’s apartment had been a dead end. Lee Brueckmann’s club had been a dead end. Regina Rex had been a dead end. Hog Hollow Hocks had been the ultimate dead end. Part of the reason for the lack of clues, the lack of direction, the lack of momentum had been Matty’s lies. But part had been the layers and folds of secrecy that blackmail entailed. Regina had used that to her own purposes by making herself out as a victim while getting enough information out of them to put her on Mark’s trail.
Everything came back to Mark Sevcik. North wasn’t willing to trust any part of Matty’s story, but he could infer, from the way events had played out, at least part of the truth. Matty had been involved with Mark in some way and had learned about Mark’s lucrative hobby. That was the most likely explanation.
At some point, Matty had decided he wanted to take over Mark’s blackmail business. He had needed help, but help that wouldn’t turn into competition. Approaching Mark’s other victims—if Matty had even known who they were—was too great a risk. No, Matty needed someone he could control.
North felt a brief, cool flicker of pity for Shaw. It wasn’t Shaw’s fault; Matty had used Shaw’s best qualities—his kindness, his innocence, his generosity—against him. Matty had taken the wounds Shaw had suffered in the attack all those years ago, and he had used them to make Shaw vulnerable, open to manipulation. And it had worked. Perfectly. Shaw and North had taken the case. They had hunted down Mark Sevcik, and in doing so, they had somehow tipped off Regina. Regina had found Mark, somehow. And then she had killed him.
Now Regina wanted the recordings.
North sighed. It was conjecture. But it felt mostly solid, and he trusted his gut. The important question, the only question that mattered right now, was where Mark had hidden the recordings. But, of course, that was the question that no one could answer. Mark Sevcik’s apartment had been torn apart by people searching. Barr and Reck, of course, but now North guessed that Regina had been there too—otherwise, how had she managed to track Mark out to a barbeque joint in Chesterfield? Had Matty searched the apartment as well? Would he have some insight into where Mark might have hidden the recordings? No, of course not. If Matty had known, he never would have hired Shaw in the first place.
North slid his mug across the counter, staring out the window. Tuck had hung bird feeders, and a cardinal was eating from one, while sparrows flocked around another. A squirrel the size of a small car was lowering itself toward a third, and North fought a smile. Tuck lost his shit about the squirrels, but no matter how many ways Tuck tried to discourage them, they kept coming back. The problem was the design; a birdfeeder had to be suspended somehow—a rope, a pole—and suspending it meant leaving a way for the squirrels to reach the seeds. Even if Tuck invented some sort of helicopter bird feeder, the squirrels would find a way. They’d probably build little winged suits and glide—
He jolted so hard that cold coffee splashed out of the mug.
The dress.
That goddamn flapper dress in Mark Sevcik’s closet.
Like squirrels building their goddamn winged suits so they’d look like birds, blend in with birds, be birds—as far as a casual glance would tell.
North sprinted upstairs, unlocked the gun safe—keyed to his prints only, so that Tuck couldn’t get in, not even when he had those really bad nights—and retrieved the CZ 75B. He slung a holster under his shoulder, stowed the gun, and ran for the Dodge Caravan. He was going to have this whole mess put away before bed.
Chapter 29
Shaw lay in bed, naked under the thin sheets, as the heat seeped away from the spot that Matty had recently vacated. From the bathroom came the whoosh and thump of the shower starting, and then Matty started singing. Shaw smiled into his elbow and stared up at the ceiling, where the late morning sun left a gold band.
The sex had been so much better. Part of it had been the way Matty reacted to Shaw’s aggression. Part of it had been that Shaw was past his first time. Part of it had been the growing familiarity of Matty’s body under Shaw’s hands. But the largest part of it, the mindblowing part of it, had been the fact that Matty didn’t have to hide himself. He told Shaw what he liked. He told Shaw what he wanted. He showed Shaw new things, things that left Shaw gasping and mewling and shredding the sheets.
Even now, hours later, the glow lingered, like a million kinks in Shaw’s body had finally unkinked, like a thousand coils had loosed their potential energy. Sex and then sleep and then sex and then sleep. And now this haze where Shaw drifted, smiling into the crook of his elbow because the grin felt too big, too wonderful for Shaw to be ready to show it to the whole world. He just wanted to be here a while, to listen to Matty singing Paula Abdul in the shower, to watch the sun thicken on the wall.
But even though Matty had managed to fuck most of Shaw’s brains straight out of his head, there was a part that wouldn’t lie down and be quiet. It kept prowling around the wound from last night, sniffing at the damage North had done. It kept thinking no matter how hard Shaw tried to shut it up.
The hospital, for example. It kept going back to the hospital. Seven years ago, after the attack that had almost killed Shaw and that had left Carl dead, Shaw had woken up in Barnes, in a private room, the air afire with the setting sun. He had been doped to the gills. He had been swimming up from the deepest part of the trauma. But he had been awake, and he had heard, out in the hall, Tucker’s voice.
A burst of laughter. Then North. Then another burst of Tuck’s laugh like machine-gun fire. Then North’s voice, this time closer, right outside the door, saying, “No way, Tuck. Just leave him alone, ok? He’s been through hell, and his mom just stepped out to go to the bathroom. You can talk to him tomorrow.”
“You’re here,” Tucker said, and even through the narcotic fog, even through the closed door, Shaw could hear the drunken wobble. “Of course you’re fucking here.”
“I’m sticking around until he wakes up. Then I’ll see what he wants me to do.”
“Like a dog.” Tucker’s voice grew louder, and sounds of a struggle filtered into the room. “You’re just waiting around like a dog.”
“Go home. You can come back tomorrow.” Another round of scuffling, and then the squeak of rubber on vinyl, like somebody stumbling and catching himself. “Go home, Tuck.”
Shaw wasn’t sure how much time passed—maybe seconds, maybe a minute. The drugs made it hard to tell. But when Tucker spoke again, his voice was hard even through the mist of booze. Hard and amused.
“I heard the guy cut off his balls. That true?”
In Shaw’s room, a machine beeped in time with his pulse, accelerating. The words filled Shaw with a horror that went all the way down inside him. He wanted to touch. To check. But he was swathed in bandages down there—and wasn’t that an answer in itself?
“Shay the Spay. That’s what I’m going to call him. Shay the—”
Shaw heard the punch. Then he heard the clatter of furniture, Tucker’s shocked cry, and a man shouting, “What’s going on?”
Lying on his bed, Shaw stared up at the ceiling, gathering fistfuls of the sheets. His heart was beating faster just with the memory. Part of it was Tucker—Shay the Spay had been a line that haunted the dorm halls for what remained of freshman year, mercifully short. But so much of the thrum of his heart, right now, was about North. Looking back like this, with distance, the moment was full of questions that Shaw had never considered. Why had Tucker gone to the hospital? Why had Tucker come up with that hateful name? Why had Tucker cared enough about Shaw to bother with any of it? And why—this was the real question—hadn’t Shaw ever considered one, simple, stunning fact: that in the entire time Shaw had known Tucker Laguerre, only one person had ever gotten the best of him. Trace Montenegro had tried, Trace Montenegro had thought
he’d pull one over on Tuck, and Trace had gotten a head butt and a broken nose. No, the only person who had ever gone up against Tuck and walked away was North McKinney, late one night in a hospital hallway seven years ago. How the hell did that make sense after what Shaw had seen the night before, the pop of the leather strap, the broken skin around North’s eye, the bloody weal on the back of his hand?
Under the shower’s heavy spray, Matty had switched to David Bowie—a full-on rockout in the bathroom—and Shaw suddenly felt itchy, restless, queasy. He rolled out of bed, found a sweatshirt with a lolcat pushing its paw into a three-tier wedding cake, with the caption I CAN HAZ BIRFDAY? running across the top of the picture. He couldn’t find his capris from the day before, or the hemp pants from the day before that, or, for that matter, any pants. He settled on a pair of cycling shorts and dragged the sweatshirt down so he wouldn’t get accused of public indecency.
Downstairs, he found Pari eating icing off the top of a cinnamon bun the size of a rottweiler. She had somehow managed to fit a washtub into one of the desk drawers, and what looked like socks were soaking under a scum of soapy water.
She rested the tip of the spoon, piled with icing, against her lower lip. Then she pointed. “Your whole junk is sticking out.”
Tugging the sweatshirt down again, Shaw said, “Any calls?”
And he wasn’t really sure why he was asking. Early in the business, Pari had come to Shaw and North with a case—not for herself, but involving her mom’s girlfriend. At some point, it had seemed like a good idea to hire her. Now, looking at the tiny woman with the rottweiler-sized cinnamon bun and a desk drawer soaking her dirty socks, he tried to remember why.
“No calls.”
She turned her divided attention back to the cinnamon bun and the textbook. She had, Shaw noticed, moved past World War II. It looked like she was now reviewing material over the Vietnam War. As Shaw circled the desk, he felt a vague sense of relief that he had escaped being called a Nazi. Maybe Pari had felt like that was low-hanging fruit.
On the far side of the desk, Shaw traced the phone cord to the wall jack, where it had been unplugged. He held it up. Pari ignored him, scooping more icing from the top of the bun and turning the page.
Shaw plugged in the cord.
The phone on her desk came to life, and a moment later, the messages light began to blink.
“Can you check that?”
A rumble started in Pari’s throat. She turned the page again. Hard. Today, the bindi was the color of Cholula hot sauce. Shaw’s stomach growled, and he eyed the cinnamon bun. Maybe he needed breakfast.
“Pari?”
“What?”
“The messages.”
“I’m. Busy.”
“Yeah, but answering the phone, handling clients, that’s really the only thing you’re good at, and—”
“I’ve got a test to study for. I’ve got a boyfriend who won’t call me back and a girlfriend who won’t stop calling me.”
Shaw inched closer to the desk.
“I’ve got four more finals coming up after this. I’ve got a mom who won’t stop complaining that I should be a doctor instead of wasting my time on this civilization degree.”
“I know,” Shaw murmured, his hands coming up to rest on the desk—one on either side of the cinnamon bun. “This is a difficult time.”
“And her girlfriend keeps trying to get me to work at Radio Girls as a bartender. I don’t have the personality for a bartender.”
“No, not really.” The bun was about six inches away. If he were quick—or if she were distracted—
“And what the hell is that supposed to mean? I’d be a great bartender. I’d be a fantastic bartender. They’d be lucky to have me tend bar. I’m the most charming person you’ve ever met, and so help me God, if you touch my cinnamon bun, you’re going to lose your hand.”
“I’m not even hungry, Pari. Jesus. Could you just check the messages?”
“This is what you want. You want me to check the messages. Fine. I’m just a second-generation immigrant in this country—”
“Your mom has two doctorates,” Shaw muttered.
“—I’m just trying to achieve the American dream, I’m trying to be a woman of color who breaks the glass ceiling in academia—”
“It’s World Civ 2,” Shaw said under his breath, “not a dissertation.”
“—but because you’re my boss, because of your straight white male privilege—”
“I’m gay, remember?”
“—I’ll check the messages. You could do it. You could pick up the phone and check yourself. But instead, I’ll do it. If that’ll make you happy, I’ll do it. Because I’m an amazing employee. And as a favor to you.”
“It is technically part of your—”
Shaw never had a chance to finish. Pari swept up the phone, jabbed a button, and pressed the receiver to her ear. She spun in her chair, turning away from Shaw to kick her legs up and rest her feet on a low filing cabinet. While her back was turned, Shaw began unwinding the cinnamon bun and jamming pieces in his mouth. Part of the frenetic eating had to do with the fact that Shaw was fairly sure his stomach was trying to devour itself. But part of it was nerves.
That flashing light was still flashing, and Pari was looping the cord around her fingers, studying her nails. Shaw unrolled another section of the bun, his mouth warming to the cinnamon, his ears practically popping with the rush of sugar. He had told North never to talk to him again. Never to call him. But what—what if North had called here? What if he had called, hoping to ask Pari when Shaw would be out so that he could pick up his stuff? What if he called and wanted to know if Shaw was still mad? And if—just hypothetically—if he had called, if Pari spun around in the chair and said, point blank, “He wants to know if you’re still mad,” what would Shaw say?
His mind grayed out at the question. He stuffed more cinnamon bun into his face. The bun wasn’t the size of a rottweiler anymore. It was maybe the size of a chihuahua. Maybe. Shaw took a little bit more, trying to even out the sides. He was starting to wonder if this much sugar could put him in a coma when he crashed. That would be nice, a coma. He could wake up and North would be there, right there, and they’d figure things out.
Pari spun around, and Shaw stuck his fingers into his mouth.
“Your junk,” Pari said.
He tugged on the sweatshirt.
“Do you want to learn how to take cheap flights for free? There’s a 900 number they want you to call. Should I have written it down? Is that my job too, to take down numbers, to give you messages? Is that another important task that you came down here to supervise?”
“Actually, we did buy you that message book—”
“Oh, so I should be grateful? Is that it? I should be on my hands and knees, kissing your feet because you bought me a message book.” She grabbed a pad of paper and held it in the air.
“That’s the extra stationary the gynecologist gave us.” Shaw pointed. “That’s the message book. The one with the carbon copy paper in case you lose—”
Pari was making that low rumble again.
“You know what? We’ll cover that another time. I’m just going to head back upstairs.”
In his bedroom, Shaw tried to settle back into the easy, relaxed trance that he had enjoyed earlier, but it was gone. The possibility of North calling, the possibility of figuring things out, had chewed a hole inside him, and no matter how Shaw shifted and stretched and closed his eyes and tried to relax, that hole was still there, the aching sense of something missing.
Before he even knew what he was doing, he was checking the nightstand, checking under the pillow, checking the dresser, checking behind the mirror. No sign of his phone. He followed the hallway, where Matty was singing Madonna—not, thank Christ, “Like a Virgin,”—and steam billowed up from behind the curtain. He checked the living room: the coffee table, under the couch, the chair he had sat in last night. It wasn�
�t until he removed the couch cushions that he found it, and that just showed how crazy last night had gotten—Shaw didn’t even remember sitting on the couch. The night with Matty, the things Matty had done—the things he had taught Shaw to do—had pretty much scorched everything else about last night from Shaw’s memory.
Shaw froze as he unlocked the screen.
He had a message.
His heart thrummed like a too-tight wire.
From North?
Jesus, if it was from North, if they could put all this behind them today, if North said he was sorry, if Shaw shrugged and said he’d need a little time, but if they could get that far, if they could get far enough that Shaw could say something like But you need to understand that Matty is part of my life now, and he’s important to me, if they could get to the part where North exploded again—because he was North, and he’d try to play it cool and end up exploding—and Shaw could calmly, rationally say, Yes, we talked all about it. He told me everything; he didn’t even try to deny it, and if you’d just give him a chance—
Shaw’s thumb slid across the screen. His heart beat so fast that he was worried it might detonate. And then a cold wave flushed the energy and excitement out of him.
The text wasn’t from North. It was an unknown number.
I want the recordings. Deliver by end of the day, or Matthew Fennley goes back to prison.
Shaw stared at the text. Then he texted back: Who is this?
No reply.
Matty was singing Cher, and even through the numbness, Shaw recognized that he was doing a really great job. His thoughts chugged forward, trying to gather momentum. Someone was threatening to send Matty back to prison. After everything Matty had been through, after all the horrible things Matty had been forced to do just to survive, someone wanted to send him back.