by Andrea Speed
This sort of went in one ear and out the other. Dylan couldn’t take much more tonight. He used to have a rather sedate life. Oh sure, he had his weird art friends and the interesting employees at the gay club, but he had a very normal routine: work, painting, watching TV, meditating. That was pretty much it. Pretty normal, much like everyone else’s with a couple of variations. But then he met an unusually attractive man named Paris, who was the only tiger-strain infected he had ever met, who seemed to talk all the time about his boyfriend, Roan. And somehow, his life took a weird sideways turn from then on. Suddenly his life was full of death, iron cages, books, guns, dominatrices, paramedics, and male prostitutes. While he was baffled much of the time, you’d think he’d been more miserable than he actually was. Oh sure, he was miserable right now, but for the most part he was perversely happy with Roan. In spite of the hard exterior, he was one of sweetest men he’d ever known. He seemed genuinely interested in helping people. Merging that with the man who could turn into a lion and eat people was a brain-twisting dichotomy.
“He… what? Are you saying you saw him do this?”
Holden got this look on his face that suggested he’d suddenly realized he had made a mistake. “And he didn’t tell you about it at all. Right. I should have guessed that really. Forget it. You know he has a temper. That’s all it is.”
“He tried to kill someone because of me?”
“No. If he wanted someone dead, they’d be dead. He just scared the living shit out of them.”
“But you said—”
“I’m full of shit, Dylan. Now, are we headed to your place or are you coming back to mine?”
How weird: he was lying and telling the truth at the same time. Dylan hadn’t known that was physically possible. But, again, he couldn’t deal with that now.
It was disappointing to think that maybe he wasn’t strong enough to be in Roan’s world, but he was starting to wonder.
HOLDEN knew he was many things, but a decent detective wasn’t one of them. Under normal circumstances. But circumstances were far from normal; circumstances were pretty well fucked.
It was bad enough the doctor had obviously lied to them: no one on a respirator was “okay.” That was like saying the guy on the iron lung only had a “mild cough.” But he figured Roan would recover eventually, because he generally did. He was a bad penny, and he kept turning up.
Poor Dylan. Not only did he look shell-shocked by all of this, but he asked him in the car, “You think Roan really loves me?” Oh, it was so weird. Holden told him that obviously he did, and obviously he didn’t admit it because the idea of it freaked him out. Lingering Paris guilt? Maybe. Holden really had no idea. The one time he’d thought he was in love, his heart had been so thoroughly crushed he was no longer sure he ever was in love. He thought love was a sham used to sell greeting cards and heterosexual conformity, even though he generally recognized the delusion when it popped up in others. Roan had it bad for Dylan, although he supposed he could understand. Dylan was a good-looking guy, but not vain, and he was as mellow as a heavily stoned person without being actually stoned or completely fucking stupid. He’d be an easy target for anybody who wanted to kill him.
Holden knew he wasn’t an easy target. He looked like he was, but he wasn’t. He’d learned long ago you did what you had to do to survive, and sometimes your survival meant hurting someone else. It happened. You just tried not to hurt anyone without necessity or good reason if you had any shred of a conscience. Holden had a shred, but only just. He figured it would serve him well.
Today, while “working” at John Newberry’s office, he had found a very queeny assistant to befriend. It wasn’t difficult. A bit of flirting, a bit of flattery, and this poor guy was following him around like a puppy. The scary thing? This guy couldn’t have been more than twenty-two, making Holden feel vaguely like a dirty old man. Okay, he was only thirty, but in hustler years that was ancient. The guy Callum—might have been shiny young, but he wasn’t very attractive and had a bit of a belly. Not much of one, but in the perfectionist world of the gay dating scene, that made him little more than a drunken desperation fuck at best. Attention from Holden meant a lot to him. He felt really bad for stringing him along.
He got access to some of John’s e-mails and line-item budget items for the past couple months. What he discovered was that, only yesterday, John had sent a rather large payment to a Duane Malloy. A bit of Googling and use of less widely known search engines turned up that he was a private investigator for a firm working out of Lakeview. John Newberry had hired a private investigator and just paid him off in a way that suggested their business was done. He wanted to ask Roan what that could possibly mean, if it was sinister as he felt it might have been, but Roan wasn’t conscious enough to ask.
Holden had to drop Dylan off at Roan’s place anyways, and luckily Dee was there to meet them. Holden whispered to him to not leave Dylan alone, which earned him a quizzical look, but then he told Dee and Dylan he’d be back as soon as he got some things from his place. Holden then headed off to find Burn.
Burn was one of those guys you met when you lived on the streets or very close to the gutter. He was a wheeler-dealer, a vulture living off the corpses of other people’s misery and actively encouraging the misery for money. He was a heroin addict who derided methheads until he got addicted to meth himself. When Holden tracked Burn down, he was shocked at how rapid his decline had been. His skin looked gray, like he was already dead, and his cheeks had sunken in, giving him a look akin to the embodiment of Famine. When he talked, Holden saw his gums were an odd color, his teeth the color of candy corn and occasionally similarly shaped, and his breath smelled like someone had just taken a shit in a vat of nail polish remover.
They sat in the dark corner of a dive bar where you could buy a hit of meth or a girl in the piss-reeking bathroom, and Holden passed over a wad of cash for one of Burn’s “specials.” They were guns with their serial numbers filed off and their barrels often altered. They were usually stolen from out of state or bought at gun shows, untraceable and anonymous, a gun without a country. They were made to be used for one gig and then tossed, guns altered specifically for evil things. Holden got a semiautomatic with six bullets in it. It was in good shape. Holden’s only objection was that it had flashy silver plating, which was important to those who wanted to show the gun off but had no use otherwise. Still, it would do. The bullets were hollow points. Holden wondered if the hit of meth he’d just paid for would be the death of Burn and if that would really be a bad thing, considering the shape he was in.
Holden could shoot. He was raised in a good Christian American household; he could use a gun before he knew how to use long division. Pastor Krause had his priorities in order. But Holden had never shot a Human. Yet. There was a first time for everything.
He’d already Google-mapped the location of Duane Malloy’s private detective agency. It wasn’t his own. He worked for an agency called Security Solutions, which sounded like a burglar alarm company. It did have an alarm, but a cheap one. It was easy to disable. The locks were also easy to pick. He’d learned that skill from a fellow street kid, Trips, that he’d had a huge crush on for a while. Shame he was straight. Holden wondered what had happened to him. One night he decided to hitchhike to Vegas, and Holden never saw him again. He hoped he had found himself a life.
Holden went through Malloy’s files, looking for something on Newberry. Sadly, Duane wasn’t as meticulous a record keeper as Roan was. The computers were locked down with passwords they hadn’t written down on Post-it notes, which Holden had been surprised to find they did in Newberry’s office. (You were just asking for people to fuck around with your shit. Holden was glad it was that easy.) Holden picked the locked drawers of Duane’s desk and a nearby file cabinet and looked through the folders and papers he found there. That’s where he found the pictures of Joel.
Big glossies of Joel entering an expensive hotel, and in a short sequence of shots, Holden saw hi
mself entering the same hotel, eyes hidden behind sunglasses but still vaguely recognizable. There were other photographs of Joel and him entering other expensive hotels. Never together, there were no pictures of them engaging in any sort of act, but there was something circumstantial about it all. There was a copy of a hotel bill, Joel’s, which showed that Joel, alone on a business trip, had ordered two different dinners and an expensive bottle of gin. (Holden remembered that. The gin was okay, but weirdly enough, he knew a cheaper brand that tasted so much better.) Then Holden found a copy of an old arrest report, when he was a juvenile and had been brought in for solicitation of prostitution, as well as a printout of his recent profile on the escort company’s website. There was no fucking way they should have had that arrest report, but then again, how did they get a copy of the hotel bill?
So he had been made. Malloy had discovered that Joel was most likely associating with a known male prostitute. And this information was given to his brother John. Blackmail? But who was doing the blackmailing? Did Malloy blackmail John, or did John simply pay him to dig up dirt on his own brother? At least Joel was right to feel paranoid.
Holden suddenly realized something. The last photo taken was on the last day he saw Joel. Duane and John knew he had seen him. Was he still being shadowed? If so, they’d have seen Roan come to his apartment, and Duane would most likely recognize a PI as unique as Roan. It wouldn’t be hard to figure out why Holden might want to see him, hire him.
And that’s how they swapped out Roan’s pills. He didn’t know it, but he had been under surveillance since he’d left Holden’s apartment. That’s how the killer knew that Roan was looking for him by day one.
This was his fault. Holy shit, was someone going to pay for this.
Holden closed the drawers, locking them again, and shoved one combined folder full of pictures and case notes down the front of his shirt, keeping his hands free. He locked the office up again but didn’t bother to reconnect the alarm system, because fuck it—let them wonder who the hell hit them. Let them wonder why.
Once he was in his car, he tucked them under the front seat, wedged inside a copy of Scientific American. He then made sure the safety was off the gun and it was ready to go.
Time to pay someone a visit. Time to see if he was angry enough to shoot someone in the face.
13
Cosmopolitan
ALTHOUGH the rich and powerful always had it much easier, in this day and age, it was hard to hide.
This was doubly true of local celebrities, a phenomenon that continued to strike Holden as incredibly weird. Was that something to be proud of? You were famous in a two-thousand-mile radius, and then, after that, progressively less so, until you were just another schlub again at the state line. It made you an egotistical asshole and an emotionally needy asshole at the same time.
Holden knew something about John that most people didn’t. He visited the Pacific Queen Casino (oh, the jokes he could have made…) almost every night. He had many luxury cars, but when he came to the casino, he always drove an old Mercedes, black with a dented fender. He didn’t want everyone to know he was a high roller up front. He tried to keep his true wealth a secret. Considering how much he blew in the casino, Holden had no idea how he thought he kept that all a secret. But at some point, someone was humoring him.
A security guard, an overweight guy with a polyester uniform and a posture that suggested he’d been broken long ago, desultorily prowled the lot in a marked sedan, but the parking lot was fucking huge, so Holden only had to wait for him to go on by, continuing his rounds further on, before working on the lock of John’s passenger door. It was incredibly easy.
All he had to do was wait. He came late enough that he didn’t have to wait long, although Holden was regretting not having his iPod with him. Finally John came walking through the parking lot, talking on a cell phone, completely oblivious to everything around him. Why did Holden even hide? He didn’t need to. He could have been following John and he’d have never noticed.
John was busy lying. He was telling someone—his wife, presumably—that the meeting finally got over and he was on his way home. He talked about someone named Dan going on and on about boring shit, an attempt to give the lie some realistic detail. Holden had heard this done a million times, by men he had just fucked, men calling their wives and family—and, in one notable case, congress—and assuring them they were having a boring, awful trip and couldn’t wait to get home. Sometimes they’d glance at Holden and roll their eyes. Sometimes they’d pretend he was already gone. So was the way of men—men, by nature, lied. Did women? Maybe. Maybe it was just a Human condition, a compulsion that couldn’t be resisted. But from what Holden knew and experienced, men were generally pieces of shit. That’s why he didn’t feel bad about what he had to do.
He waited until John had gotten in his car and finished his call before he came up and opened the passenger-side door, sliding into the seat before John had realized he had an unwanted hitchhiker.
“Hey,” John said, and Holden pulled out the gun and pressed it against his forehead, shoving him back until his head was pushed up against the window.
“You know who I am,” Holden told him. “Just like I know who you are. But if I blow your fucking brains out right now, it’ll never be connected to me. You’ll be a mystery, much like the death of your brother. The curse of the Newberrys. Although considering your gambling debts, they’ll probably think that finally caught up with you.”
“Wh-what… who are—”
Holden shoved the barrel even harder into John’s head, and the back of his head thunked against the glass. “Not this shit. I want to kill you enough as it is. Don’t make me lose my temper.”
“I—I have money.”
“I know you do. That’s your problem. Now tell me why you’ve had me followed and who tried to kill Roan McKichan before I just start breaking things.”‘
John swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing in an unstable manner, as his eyes nervously studied Holden’s face. Maybe he was serious about not knowing him at first, because Holden could see recognition click into place now. His wariness was tempered by fear, and a modicum of sneering contempt. Holden could read his mind in this second—he was thinking, “Filthy whore.” Maybe because he was gay, there was an extra fear of cooties, or worse yet, contagious gayness. Maybe if they shared air too long, he’d get the gay too. “I had nothing—”
Holden hit him with the gun barrel. Just drew his wrist back sharply and turned the gun just slightly, so when he made contact with John’s skin, the sight hit him first. Skin ripped along his forehead, making John yelp, and a small seam of blood opened, trickling down his face.
“I’ve already decided to kill you,” Holden told him. “You know, I’m as liberal as anyone else in the sex trade, although we love you conservative, repressed guys. If not for you, we’d be out of a job. But I’ve been studying people long enough to know that there are some who are a waste of flesh. They do nothing but steal oxygen and cause misery for everyone else. They have no reason to exist, and really shouldn’t, for the greater good of us all. You’re one of those people, John. You’re a cold-blooded fuck who extorted his own brother for money. Did you kill him too? Not personally—you’re a ball-less wonder if I’ve ever seen one. But did you pay someone to do it for you? Or is making sure your brother gets an overdose of potassium an easy thing? I wouldn’t know. I’m an only child. Well, I wasn’t really, but I was raised one, so I missed out on all the sibling bonding. Tell me why Joel had to die, John.”
John grimaced in pain, bringing a hand up to his forehead. When he saw the blood that came away on his hand, he looked ashen, slightly ill. Did the sight of blood make him sick? No wonder he took to poisoning people instead: no blood, no icky bodily fluids, just a corpse. “I didn’t kill him,” he said, more a plea than anything else, his voice cracking with fear and confusion. “I wouldn’t do that. Why would I do that?”
“Because you’re up to your
ass in debt, John, and you need the buyout to take place so you can have a fresh hard-cash infusion. That’s a hell of a murder motive. According to a detective friend of mine, money is usually the number one reason for death.” Or maybe it was number two—he couldn’t remember. But it didn’t matter anyways.
John was cracking, easily and quickly. He believed Holden was serious about killing him, or guilt was eating away at him, or he noticed the safety was off. Maybe all of the above. “I didn’t do it. Okay, yeah, I need the money, but Joel’s estate is all going to his bitch of a current wife and his spoiled brat kids. How do I benefit from his death?”
“The buyout.”
He let out a scoff of a laugh, breathless and mirthless. “I have to split it with the rest of the family. It wouldn’t be much. I’d get more if Joel was alive to negotiate the deal. He could get blood from a stone.”
That felt like truth. Joel had an appealing charm when he turned it on. “Why did he oppose the buyout?”
“I dunno. He said some shit about our legacy and local media and a whole bunch of grade-A bullshit that never made any sense to me. I think he was just being a fuckhead, opposing it because the rest of us were all for it. It was his way of reminding all of us he was in control.”
That, too, had a ring of truth. The men who hired him did so because they were trying to control the scenario. An anonymous trick might discover who you are; a boyfriend might become bitter. But a prostitute was engaged in a simple business transaction and had much to lose if they decided to expose you. It was mutually assured destruction if the secret leaked out. Or so the johns thought, and that was fine with Holden if they honestly believed that to be true. It wasn’t, though. A whore might have been just a whore, but a man who paid another man for sex never seemed to live it down in this country. Paying a woman was almost understandable and seemed to earn sympathy in some corners, but a man? Never. You were the eternal butt of a joke. But desire often outweighed logic, thankfully for his bank account. “What exactly did you pay Duane Malloy for? And consider your answer carefully.”