Trust Me

by Paul Slatter

  So, for the moment, she needed to speak to the one guy who could find out pretty quick—even if he was an idiot.

  She picked up the phone again and was surprised at the speed she was put through once she’d mentioned her name.

  “Ditcon here,” was all she’d heard, the guy sounding like he had a thousand other things to do at that precise moment rather than talk to her, which in reality couldn’t have been further from the truth.

  Daltrey said, “It’s Daltrey, I need you to find out who you’ve got in the morgue wearing my name tag.”

  “I’m busy, why don’t you call them yourself and ask?”

  Daltrey took a deep breath and felt the rush of blood she used to feel when someone had pissed her off and whoever it was, was about to get an earful. The man was a thoughtless pig. She said, “If I’m right in thinking there’s only two people in this world who know you’re full of shit, maybe three if you include your mother. So, I’ll ask again if you can get me a name or I’ll start telling everyone I meet you had no idea I was on that boat.”

  “What boat?” Ditcon snapped back.

  Jesus, Daltrey thought, then she said, “Just get it done, so as you can keep up your bullshit charade.” Then she hung up.

  Ditcon sat back down in his office chair and stared at his phone thinking now of all the things he should have said. Such as, ‘unless you’re Mayor, then you can get it done yourself you fucking bitch’, or ‘do your damn job’, or ‘I just saved your ass, so cut the attitude?’ Yeah, that’s what he should have said. Told it to her just like that. That’s part of the job though, diplomacy, being able to know when to keep quiet. After all, she’d been undercover and he knew how straining that could be—so he’d been told. He picked up the phone and said to the person on the other end who he thought he knew but didn’t, this guy who always offered resistance when all he needed to do was say ‘yes’.

  “I want the name that goes with the body you thought was Daltrey. We let your incompetence down there go for a while because it suited us. But no longer, so no back talk, the girl’s been undercover for me and she needs a name.”

  Then he looked up and saw Stephanie was just waking up, the girl sleeping in his comfy chair by the window after she’d just managed to rebuff another approach. She said, “You want me to drive you to that place in Deep Cove so as we can get a coffee?”

  That was the ticket, Ditcon thought, he’d have her grab one of them Dodge Chargers from the pound and whip him over there. Then when he was done he’d phone that guy from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and see what was happening with that fuckhead Chendrill. After all, why should a guy who’d busted across the border illegally be driving around in an Aston Martin?

  Ditcon finished his muffin and his hot chocolate and wondered why Stephanie only ate half of hers when they came here. She was probably thinking about her weight, as girls did. Catching her attention as she looked out the window to the inlet that could easily have passed for a lake, he said, “You know this isn’t Hollywood, you can finish that.”

  “If you want it you can have it,” Stephanie said, then raised her eyebrows and gave him that cheeky smile to finish it off at the end of the sentence to imply a double meaning.

  Fuck the little bitch, Ditcon thought, flirting with him all the time and giving him a sniff but not letting him have sex with her properly like she should have been doing by now. She was fun though, even if his neck was starting to ache, this time, for once, for real. He said, “You know, I’m thinking this Chendrill’s being a bit flash, cruising in an Aston when all we’ve got is a Charger.”

  “Yeah I was thinking the same,” said Stephanie, when in reality was she had only been thinking about how she had to walk her boyfriend’s dog that evening because he would be working late—the same “working late” as she had been doing for the last couple of days, except he hadn’t been holding off because he was in a relationship. “Why don’t you call the guy the Yanks have up here sniffing about and see what he’s found out and we can take it from there,” she suggested.

  The phone had almost rung off and went to voice mail when Basil answered. Ditcon and Stephanie sat there staring at the phone on speaker propped up on the table.

  “Hello,” Basil said, waiting silently long enough for Ditcon and Stephanie to hear the whale music in the background.

  Ditcon looked strangely at his new driver who wouldn’t give him any, then asked, “Where are you?”

  Basil asking straight back.

  “Who is this?”

  Ditcon always liked this bit whenever he was given the chance to lay out his full credentials, even if it was over the phone or otherwise, and being the egotistical prick he was he wasn’t going to let the opportunity pass by—especially when he was so close to nirvana with his new sexy driver de jour. Taking a deep breath, he said his name and rank slowly and surely into the phone, laying it out as if he was in fact hearing it himself while being honoured for bravery, which was not going to be happening any time soon, “Chief Inspector Ditcon of the Vancouver Police Department. Please answer the question.”

  “You don’t even know who I am, I haven’t even identified myself,” answered Basil from the other end of the phone.

  Ditcon said back quickly, “Basil Setter, working undercover with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. That’s who you are. So cut the bullshit.”

  Basil said straight back, “Get to the point, I’m busy.”

  Ditcon looked at Stephanie sitting there next to him raising her eyebrows. He’d have liked to have gone over to wherever this idiot was, pick him up, then throw the disrespectful prick back across the border. But he couldn’t, not without there being an international incident, so, eating it, he said, “Tell me how you’re doing with Chendrill?”

  “Chendrill’s great.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “And I’m asking so you need to tell me.”

  “My wages are paid in U.S. dollars, not Canadian.”

  “I’m thinking you want to keep getting paid, so cut the shit or I’ll have you sent back home.”

  “I am home, I’m Canadian, remember.”

  Ditcon looked at Stephanie; the conversation wasn’t going well and he could feel his temper building and that wouldn’t look good, not when he was pretending to be cool. The fucking prick was getting smart with him, pulling the Canuck card when the fucker was probably from Quebec. Then as soon as he was about to tell the guy to go fuck himself and send a car to some unknown address where they played relaxing fucking shitty whale music to have him arrested, Stephanie leaned in and said, “Basil. Please tell us anything you may have found out about Chendrill and in return we’ll happily make the call to your superiors to tell them what a great job you’re doing up here.”

  And that was all he needed to hear.

  **************

  Mazzi Hegan opened the front door to his penthouse suite and, without a thought, wandered down to the living room and put his feet up on the glass coffee table. His boots were still on and still felt heavy, but putting it out there to Sebastian, who he knew would understand, had been a bigger weight off his chest. That ape Chendrill had been there, yes, and heard his confession, but what the fuck? He’d have found out anyway. His type always did. He looked at his phone and played with it for a while, doing nothing, checking this and checking that, and flipping through the pictures of the night before, after he’d given in to temptation and messaged, ‘Hi!’ to the woman who had only hours before made him puke.

  The photos were there now on his phone, telling him the story about what he’d done and who he was now becoming.

  He had been in the bar with a chick who normally hung around with Einer. The pair of them were getting wasted, then there was a plasterer there with them with his arm around her neck. Then the three of them were doing green shooters, her in the middle of them, then there were flaming Sambucas, and they were looking all pie-eyed. Then another girl was with them with nice
teeth and big tits with eyes that matched. Then another girl and Einer, who didn’t look drunk. All of them were popping selfies as quick as they were knocking back the drinks. Then they were back at this guy’s place with shit all over the floor and half eaten bags of chips in the kitchen. All of them were in his little bedroom, then all of them were naked and fucking, except, for once, it wasn’t him being spit roasted in the middle, taking it from both ends—it was a girl he remembered now who was screaming too loud and the guy whose place it was was trying to keep her quiet with his dick in her mouth, and the guy was not looking Mazzi in the eye, let alone kissing him. Einer was there watching it all and laughing at Mazzi as Mazzi Hegan fucked one girl, and then the next, as Einer fucked the girl with the teeth and made her tits wobble.

  Then he’d woken up still drunk and alone, not knowing where he was, with his face on a sheet with a shitty thread count which needed to be washed, his shoes gone, and only when he’d stepped outside with bloodshot eyes into the cool morning air, wearing the only things that he could find that would fit on his feet, he’d realized that he was just around the corner from Slave where there was a room full of people waiting for him in a meeting he didn’t want to be at.

  But now it was all out in the open and chances are his Mauri slow movers were gone. But what the hell. It had been worth it, getting wasted and feeling free, seeing a straight construction worker naked—going at it and making weird faces like he had. But the girls, they’d smelled nice, and he’d liked the feel of his dick inside them, liked the way they could just go and go, orgasm after orgasm until none of the guys had anything left to give.

  He stared along his legs to his boots and smiled; he hadn’t had a pair on like it since he’d gone out with his friends years ago all dressed up. They were quite cool really, all covered in white stuff, and even if they were a tenth the price of his Mauri’s, they were worth the trade. All he needed now was the construction hat and a safety vest and he could have gone dancing. But who with and where? With a bunch of fags? No, he wasn’t feeling that. There was no doubt about it, pussy was what he was feeling for the moment, and sexy pussy at that, so he may as well go with the flow.

  Mazzi stared at his phone, looking at the pictures of the girls and their long hair and nails the same as he’d once tried to grow. Yeah girls were it, really sexy girls with softer skin and better hair than his. Girls with sexy legs and shoes whom he could go out in his new boots, dressed as a construction worker and pick up. Girls he could lay out some coin on and take them cruising in the Ferrari, then, if he was lucky, he could fuck them at the point in Stanley Park, just like these other hetro guys seemed to do.

  Chapter Ten

  He found some old jeans, a t-shirt, and a construction vest some closet case had left behind a year before, stuck the boots back on, and headed out into the night in the Ferrari. He hit Granville Street, heading north off the bridge and instead of turning left onto the rainbow coloured streets of Davie he carried on up the road to where the bars were and the straight people got their kicks.

  For the first time in his life, he parked the car with ease and strutted in his big boots and vest into the first bar he saw. Throwing the keys to the Ferrari on the counter he asked the girl with the nice ass behind the bar for a beer. That should do it, he thought as he saw her clock the emblem on the keys and pick up a glass. He’d seen it work before in a movie when an actor had pulled a bar maid. The actor all macho in the movies and pretending to the world to be straight but Mazzi knowing from personal experience, that the guy wasn’t, because of the way he’d kissed him once at a party. Then he heard the girl say, “Six dollars twenty-five.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Six dollars twenty-five.”

  Not even a ‘hey good looking’ or ‘nice car’, or anything, just the bill and he hadn’t even seen let alone wet his lips with a beer yet. So just as the girl turned around, he said, putting it out there the same as he would have a few blocks down in the old neighbourhood he used to frequent on Davie, “Nice ass.”

  “Fuck you.”

  That was all he got back as a reply, no sly look or grin or sexy wink as a thank you like he’d seen in the movies. Just ‘fuck you’. Well fuck you too, Mazzi thought, as he handed her a stack of twenties and walked away without a drink. He reached the shooters girl cruising the room, grabbed two, knocked them back, then another one, and, putting the glass back down on the tray, said through the music, “Go see your friend, I gave her $400, keep $100 for yourself and the drinks flowing for me and the girls baby.”

  Then he grabbed another shooter and headed off into the room with the glass and the waitress in tow, rocking from side to side to the music, as she handed out the first ever drinks he’d bought for women and letting them know they were from him. He walked on, strutting his stuff, the women were fine, but despite the free booze they were still keeping to themselves, talking in their little groups or lost within their phones and not saying thanks. He walked over to the first who looked in his direction and as soon as he got there said, “Hi I’m Mazzi Hegan.” The girl just looked up and nodded back, not even bothering to speak as she watched Mazzi moving his head from side to side to the music. Then again as he normally would in this situation if he was a few blocks to the west on Davie, he said, “You wanna see my dick?”

  The girl just stared, wondering if for the moment she’d heard this guy dressed in construction clothes correctly. “Sorry?” she said. Mazzi Hegan said it again, but this time pulled out his phone, not waiting for an answer.

  He moved on to the next, “Hey?” and then the next, “Hey, what’s up?” Then to another, “Hey!”—but this time he added ‘baby’ then said, “Man, you’re hot, wanna come blow me in the bathroom?”

  He walked across the room and stood alone at the edge of the dance floor. Fuck, this isn’t easy, he thought. The straight to the point approach he was used to wasn’t working with these women. They just weren’t as receptive as the guys were around the corner on Davie. Normally, he’d have had sex at least twice by now, especially given what he was wearing. All he’d have to do was put it out there and next thing he’d be out back in a sword swallowing competition. But that wasn’t going to work here it seemed. Mazzi looked out through the crowd, the girls were still doing the same as they had been—some dancing, mostly together with other girls, though some were with guys who seemed to have this straight thing under control.

  The shooter girl passed by again and he took another, then one more, knocking them both back. Then he caught her again on the way back. The music was weird here also, almost rave-like, but not, some sort of rave/techno/lounge mix that didn’t seem like it knew what it wanted to be. He watched the DJ up on his small plinth, the guy really tall in his beanie cap, with only one ear in his big puffy headphones, fiddling with the knobs on his little machine. DJ Raffi, the man grooving to his own sounds with three girls on the go. The guy looking up and wondering why one of the Village People was looking at him, and also wondering what Mazzi was about to do now that he was entering the dance floor alone.

  Mazzi Hegan hit the centre of the dance floor and started to loosen up, feeling the music. In amongst it all there had to be some raw bassline to hook into, and a second later he had it. Boom Boom da Boom Boom da boom boom. Yes, Mazzi had it now. He looked at a circle of girls all dancing around their handbags and with his elbows out at chest height and his fists at both nipples with his left arm up and his right down he began to strut across the dance floor, rocking his hips, lifting both arms up and down alternating each of his fists up to below his chin to a rhythm only he could hear.

  He reached the girls, staring them each in the eyes as he passed around and around—the girls looking at each other wondering what the fuck was going on. Then, on his third pass, and just as he’d gotten them all under his spell, he called out in his deep Swedish accent to DJ Raffi on his plinth, “Hey DJ, let’s get this party started baby, give me some ABBA, give me some Pet Shop Boys, where’s the Frankie man!
”

  It was going to be a tough transition.

  ***********

  Adalia Seychan had a problem, and it wasn’t one her plastic surgeon could remedy; though in the end, it came down to almost the same thing. The problem was she needed time, time to relax, time for people to faff over her so as she could feel special, time to fuck, time to recover, and time in between Patrick and Slave’s incredible sci-fi flick and the next film she’d just been offered. She needed time.

  This new film had come from out of the blue after its leading lady had walked from the project, and the producers were now delighted to go with Adalia—that is, if she was interested, because after all she had not been their first choice, but truth was they’d said she had ‘actually’ been their first choice from the start, had the studio not stepped in. Which was a complete crock of shit, which Adalia knew, but, being cut from the same cloth as the people who had fed her this line, she went along with it anyway. The only problem now though was that the producers on the next job had done the math and lined up a new shooting schedule to start two days after Adalia would be taking off her space suit in Vancouver.

  But this wasn’t enough. She needed at least six weeks to prepare, and since the new offer was better it was Patrick who was going to have to make the changes. And all Patrick, being Patrick, had said to Adalia’s agent when he’d called with the proposal was a completely naïve and ill-informed, “no problem, we’ll start shooting next week.”

  The first person to be woken up about this emergency was Chendrill, who couldn’t care less, and who’d been keeping Dan safe while sleeping over with Dan’s mother again. The second was Mazzi Hegan, who’d gone to bed early but hadn’t been to sleep—for only an hour after he’d entered, on his own accord, the first bar where the majority of its patrons ran the risk of procreation if they had sex, he’d met Einer’s girl again. And after watching him clear the dance floor, all she’d had to say was, “Why are you hitting on kids when you’ve got real women you can please?”