by Andrea Speed
The conversation continued once they were outside in the parking lot. Rosenberg walked around the corner of the building, which he assumed was the smoking area, and started rummaging in her small black purse. The wind came up, cold and ragged, and blew cigarette butts and assorted other detritus across the asphalt with a scraping sound like skeletal fingers. “So you’re an expert on infecteds?” Dylan asked, wanting to say something.
She shrugged again. “Who’s an expert on this virus? It’s a fucking nightmare of impossibilities. No one should be able to transform into another species, not even a facsimile of another species, but there that fucker is, doing it. We can’t even agree on how it came to be. The fucking thing is still a big mystery.” She found her pack of cigarettes and pulled them out, a crumpled pack of Marlboro Reds that seemed to only have a couple of cigarettes left in it. She must have seen him looking at it, because she said, “I only allow myself two cigarettes a day, three if it’s a fucking crappy day. This is gonna be a six-cigarette day, I just know it.”
He had no idea she was so profane. But, again, it made sense that Roan would consider her a friend. “So what’s your speculation on Roan’s problem?”
She shook her head as she stuck a cigarette in the corner of her mouth. “I can’t tell you even if I wanted to. A patient should hear it first, family second. But I will tell you this, although if you repeat it I’ll have to deny it, ’cause I’ll be drummed out of the medical profession. But I don’t think you need to worry about Roan. I don’t think the virus is going to let him die just yet.”
Dylan momentarily thought that was a sick joke, but as she lit her cigarette and took what was obviously a satisfying drag, he realized she was perfectly serious.
What the fuck was that supposed to mean?
HOLDEN was glad to hear that Roan was okay. But he knew Dylan was lying to him about something.
It was because Holden heard a sort of thickening in his voice, like he’d been crying (or possibly just eaten a whole buttload of cheese, but somehow he didn’t think that was a possibility). Dylan insisted that Roan was fine, though, conscious and awake, and that he thought Holden had the wrong end of the stick. Roan thought the answers to all of this lay with Kyle or Jessie.
For the record, Ahmed agreed with Roan. “Killin’ someone with potassium is just weird,” he said, as they crossed the Oregon border. “You need a weird person to do something like that. John doesn’t sound weird enough. He sounds kinda pathetic.”
That did have a ring of truth to it, which irritated Holden no end. Being an asshole wasn’t enough? What was the world coming to when being a major grade-A asshole wasn’t enough to get you accused of murder?
They made a pit stop at a Starbucks, and they had Wi-Fi, so Holden did some surfing. Jessie Newberry was a bit hard to find, but eventually he tracked him down to his Facebook page, where his handle was Jessie369. Holden recognized him even with his clothes on.
Kyle was better looking in the face, although Jessie had a harder, gym-toned body. A little too gym-toned, actually, he’d crossed that subtle line between hot and gross. Veins stood out on muscles that had lumpy shapes, and Holden could imagine the track marks even if he didn’t see them. Was he more of a steroid guy or an HGH guy? Maybe both.
While paging through his personal photo gallery, Holden came away with the idea that this was a man so in love with himself that calling him a narcissist would actually be an understatement. There he was pumping iron; there he was striking a pose in a Speedo (and having seen the sex tape, Holden knew he was padding it, ’cause his dick just wasn’t that big); there he was supposedly impressing a bleached blonde with huge, fake tits with the bulbous muscles in his arms; there he was in his gym tank top in front of the juice bar—
Wait a fucking second.
Holden scoured his page carefully. Jessie worked in a gym? He did. He claimed he was a personal trainer, which included not just exercise but a nutritional regime of his own design. (Jessie had his whole sales pitch in the “bio” section.)
Oh shit. This was it.
As Ahmed came back to the table with his second green tea Frappuccino, Holden asked, “Do you know where the Seattle Fitness Center is?”
He took a sip of his drink, then said, “Seattle?”
Holden scowled at his poor joke. “We need to get back on the road and get there now. I think I just found a huge clue.”
Ahmed sighed and shoved himself out of his chair. “Yippee skippee. You know, I’m kind of wondering what you get out of being Hawk to his Spenser.”
Holden stared up at him blankly and asked, “What?”
Ahmed shook his head and walked away.
Actually, he knew the reference he was making. Holden just felt like being a jackass.
20
Warbrain
HOLDEN hated lying to Ahmed. He hoped he never found out about it.
All the way to Seattle, Ahmed tried to talk him out of “seeking revenge” or “going off half-cocked” (oh, the fun you could have with that phrase), and after a bit Holden let him get his way, telling him to just drop him off at his apartment. He said he had a client to meet at the Sheridan in a couple of hours, anyways. That sent Ahmed off on his usual lecture about how exploitative prostitution was, even if he didn’t feel exploited, blah blah blah. He’d heard it several times before. It wasn’t that Ahmed didn’t have a point, because of course he did, and all day (and night, sometimes both) he worked with broken people who often had such things in their past or present. Of course he was right.
But Holden knew he wasn’t broken. He’d decided long ago he was going to sell himself, sure, but he was going to exploit his clients, not the other way around. And if Ahmed thought they were broken, he hadn’t met their clients. Most of them were the sorriest sons of bitches he’d ever met. Sad, sad people.
But maybe it took one to know one.
Holden called Seattle Fitness from his home, and was able to wheedle Jessie’s number from someone with a bullshit story about having to cancel an appointment he’d made with him but he’d lost his business card. (He’d just guessed Jessie had a business card. It was a correct guess.) He then called Jessie and got his machine, and he left a very succinct message: “Hey, Jessie, I’m a friend of Colt Brixton’s, and he gave me this digital video file on a jump drive that I bet you’ll want to have. If you’re not interested, I’ll give Kyle a call.” He then recited his phone number and hung up.
Holden poured himself a gin and juice for courage and turned on his stereo, giving himself some background music to distract him from his darker thoughts. Ironically—or maybe not—he still had his iPod plugged into the stereo, and it started playing that The National song, the one about people throwing money at each other and crying. Presumably the song was about a bad relationship, but he thought it had the hooker/client relationship down pretty well. Same thing, perhaps. He then made a call to someone he didn’t call very often, a guy named Phat.
Holden had time to change his shirt, to put on a skintight black tank top that showed off his broad chest, and had stripped down to his underwear by the time the phone rang. It had taken Jessie twenty-five minutes to call back.
“What the fuck do you want?” he snarled. Holden could almost hear the foam frothing at the corners of his mouth.
“Don’t be that way,” he replied, turning on the teasing, oozing charm he usually adopted when he was trying to calm his more nervous clients. Usually newbies or virgins. “I’m not so crass as to want to blackmail you. I have a much more… profitable proposition for the both of us.”
“Who is this?” Jessie demanded, sounding suspicious.
“A businessman. Call me Marco. Can we meet? I’m on my way to Seattle right now.” Although in general a lie was easier to swallow when sprinkled with some truth, sometimes Holden discovered there was a strange emotional symmetry when you did nothing but lie. People felt better, found it easier to swallow when the bullshit was so smooth and pretty and even.
“Y
ou’re lying,” he accused. He sounded unsure. “You don’t have a copy of the tape. This is bullshit.”
“That thing on your left butt cheek—was that a mole or a pimple? I couldn’t tell since the lighting was so poor.” It was a pimple—Jessie had a case of bacne, suggesting steroid abuse, but to tell him he knew of it would give the game away.
Jessie was quiet for a long time. All Holden could hear was his ragged breathing. Finally, he told him to meet him at an address in two hours. Holden agreed, hung up, and immediately Googled the address.
A private home in the well-off part of the Madrona district. Jessie’s place? A good guess, and he was glad that his hunch that Jessie would want to meet in private was the correct one. He probably wouldn’t tell anyone of the meeting either, sealing his fate.
Holden pulled on vaguely out of fashion baggy jeans, baggy enough to hide what he was carrying, and was finished dressing when there was a knock at the door. Phan—known on the streets as Phat—was there, a rangy, short guy in a baggy canvas jacket and camo pants, emo-boy shaggy hair squashed awkwardly under a dark knit cap and sticking out beneath it like warning spikes. He was an average-looking Vietnamese guy who looked seventeen but was in actuality twenty-five, a father twice over by two different women, and supposedly had a cousin who was some sort of Asian gangster, but if that was true, why was he simply a street-corner dealer? Maybe he was trying to work his way up. Gangsters all had to start somewhere.
“Y’know I usually don’t make house calls.” He sniffed as he made like he was going to shake Holden’s hand but slipped him the plastic-wrapped package from his palm. Holden took it, shoving it in his pocket, where he also pulled out the folded money and hid it in his hand as he grabbed the front pocket of Phat’s camo pants and pulled him forward, as if threatening to give him a kiss. He snuck the money in his pocket. “Hey, no fag stuff,” Phat warned.
“Take it like a man, Phat,” he teased, leaving in a hard edge. “You never know who could be watching.”
That seemed to remind him how dangerous this was, and Phat, twitchy at the best of times, seemed to visibly fidget. “Yeah, yeah. But why d’ya want the bad stuff—”
“The less you know, the better off you are.”
Phat hardly needed to think about that. He just nodded, sniffing again. Either he had a constant cold that wouldn’t go away, major sinus problems, or he was a big fan of coke. “Got a new shipment of Viagra over the border.”
“I’m good, but I’ll let you know when I need some,” Holden said and closed the door on him. Not that Phat cared, as he was already turning away. Phat may have been a street dealer, but he rarely dealt in your standard drugs. He dealt mostly in prescription and “club” drugs and made better money than you’d think by both his wardrobe and his pedestrian tastes. Less violence that way too.
Holden prepared it and got it ready, putting the final result in a small velvet bag that he had no idea how he’d acquired. Just one of those things that occasionally seemed to breed and materialize in the chaotic darkness of junk drawers. He checked himself out one more time in the mirror, making sure there were no suspicious bulges, and put on his white, motocross-style leather jacket, which always made him feel like a whore. He wasn’t actually sure why, but he felt that something about the jacket screamed, “I’m a cheap hooker.” And that was fine by him. The more harmless Jessie thought he was, the better. The last thing he grabbed was the jump drive, which did have something pornographic on it, but it wasn’t Jessie’s sex tape.
He drove up to Seattle, listening to the indie station Roan loved so much, and wondered about the fear and weariness he’d heard in Dylan’s voice earlier. Was something wrong with Roan, no matter what he actually said? That must have been it. Gruff old Roan liked men who wore their hearts on their sleeves, men who were the opposite of stoic, butch him. He felt bad for Dylan. Roan was a bit like a rickety carnival ride: you thought you were prepared for the trip you were about to go on, but no one ever really was. He wasn’t for the fainthearted.
Holden had lost all sense of time. He couldn’t remember when he’d started this day, and now it was night, the sky a black blanket, headlights blinding and taillights molten. When did he last sleep or eat? He was overdue for both, but he was wired right now. He had something to do first, miles to go before he could sleep.
He parked his car a block over from Jessie’s home and walked the rest of the way on foot. It gave him time to do a little reconnaissance, stake out the place. The neighborhoods were supremely quiet, and he seemed to be the only person walking on either street. He pulled on his gloves before he was in view of the house.
Jessie had a modest—for the Newberrys—two-story house with a peaked roof and a well-landscaped front yard. He had a high fence around the backyard, blocking it from view, and Holden was willing to bet his left nut he had a pool back there, perhaps a hot tub, and even a pony wasn’t out of the question. If you assumed a Newberry had more money than sense, you were generally on firm ground.
Jessie was just as he looked in his Facebook photos: grotesque. Less handsome in person, which seemed impossible, Holden wasn’t sure if the steroid abuse was ravaging him or if he’d had his photos touched up first. His pores looked too big on his gaunt, angular face, which still had the counterintuitive puffiness that suggested HGH use. It didn’t help that the look on his face was so sour and aggressive, making him look even more hideous.
Jessie looked around before holding the door open, making sure Holden was alone, but he didn’t say anything until Holden was inside and he’d shut the door. “Where’s the fucking drive?” he snapped.
“We talk business first,” Holden countered, still oozing friendly charm, giving him a toothy smile. “Then I’ll give you the drive if you’re not interested in what I have to say.” Sometimes his own ability to lie shocked the hell out of him. It was so easy, so natural to him that the truth was actually hard. Lying was second nature, and considering his preacher dad, he wondered if it ran in the family: a bullshit gene. Carried by all successful evangelists, politicians, and con men everywhere.
“I’m not interested,” Jessie snarled, pale blue eyes narrowed to slits. Even as he growled, he jerked his head toward the living room. Jessie’s growl struck Holden as comical. It was a Human noise, pathetic, meant to be tough and scary but actually the exact opposite. After having heard Roan growl—really growl, not a Human noise, but a shit your pants lion wants to kill you and eat your entrails growl—any attempt by anyone else made him want to laugh. They had no idea what a real growl was and how scary it could be, especially when accompanied by the sounds of breaking bones and snapping joints. “Why the fuck you wearing gloves?”
“I’m a bit OCD, I’m afraid. Do you know you mostly get colds from shaking hands or touching doorknobs? It’s disgusting the amount of germs that are everywhere.” He’d deliberately talked in a higher octave, playing up a natural inclination to lisp. He wanted to sound the stereotypical interior-decorator fairy you could find on any sitcom, the harmless queen who screamed bloody murder if he saw a spider. Let Jessie believe he was harmless. Let him believe he could never be any threat to a brawny he-man like him.
Jessie’s room looked like a Best Buy display. All the latest electronic toys that a boy could want were sparkling new and ready to go, from the big screen HD TV to the home theater system, the stereo with enough bass to rattle your fillings loose, a Wii and a PlayStation of some sort (Holden just didn’t know video game systems) sitting side by side, a skeletal-framed metal desk with a computer with its own wide flat-screen monitor, perhaps in case he got bored of watching porn on the big screen. “Your name isn’t Marco,” Jessie said, his aggression naked in his voice.
So he knew who he was. That confirmed that either John had told him about the detective he’d hired to look into Joel, or he’d found out in another way. Holden turned and fixed him with one of his seductive half smiles. “I said for you to call me that. It’s one of my names—I have three. Which one do
you know me by?”
Jessie was wired. Sweat beaded on his broad forehead, even though he was only wearing a sleeveless red muscle shirt and navy jogging shorts, and the muscles in his arms and jaw seemed to tense and flex according to their own rhythms, a visible symphony of anxiety and barely suppressed rage. He wanted to rip Holden’s head off. Good thing he came prepared to take on an angry gorilla. “Holden somethin’. You’re the fag whore that used to get with Uncle Joel.” He didn’t even try and hide his sneer of contempt. “You know Colt? Was this a setup or somethin’?”
“Hardly. All us fag whores know each other.” He said that with a certain amount of sarcasm, but he was sure it sailed far over Jessie’s head. “After having seen you in action, I must admit, I thought you’d be perfect for this new venture I’m launching with a friend of mine. We’re getting into porno, web content only, and with your body, you’d be perfect for our muscle category. I’ve put out some feelers toward Kyle, he’d be more of a frat-boy-style guy, but he seems to insist on anonymity. If you have no objections about wearing a slave mask while fucking, I think we can swing anonymity for both of you. Now, it’s going to be a subscription-only deal, so not everyone will be able to access it—”
“Are you fucking insane?” Jessie roared, stomping toward him in a menacing way. Holden didn’t react—to back up was to show fear, and to show fear was to invite death, so he held his ground and met his gaze straight on. “I’m no faggot! And I certainly ain’t no fucking—get out of my house! Get out!”
“And take the drive with me? Sure.”
He glared at him, a muscle jumping in his jaw, his thin, cracked upper lip curled up as if caught by an invisible fishhook. God, what an ugly man. “I listened to your disgusting fucking pitch. Now give me the drive.”
“Have you actually seen the footage, Jessie? It’s interesting.”
Jessie’s eyes were so narrowed they were almost gone. His hair was slicked back, as if he’d just gotten out of a shower, but he still smelled like rank sweat, and combing his dull brown hair back so sharply only revealed his receding hairline, making his forehead look like it was creeping up his skull. “I wouldn’t watch that disgusting—I was drugged! Kyle did that, he… he’s sick! I ain’t no sissy fag!”