Declination

by Gregory Ashe

  Declination

  A BOREALIS INVESTIGATION

  GREGORY ASHE

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright 2019 Gregory Ashe

  All Rights Reserved

  Declination, noun: the deviation of a compass needle from true north; the extent of that deviation.

  Shaw’s note: e.g., that time junior year when North insisted he could find his way out of the corn maze blindfolded and ended up in the hospital with a minor concussion.

  North’s note: (better example) Shaw thinking fajitas are better than tamales.

  Shaw’s correction: Disagreeing with you doesn’t count as deviation just because your name is North, and anyway, you were the one who made out with a scarecrow after you hit your head on that wagon.

  North’s correction: That scarecrow was fucking hot. Period.

  Chapter 1

  SHAW PICKED HIS WAY over a shifting pile of rubble in the lobby of the decaying Spa Parnassus. Around him, the building revealed signs of a past that had been marked by wealth, prestige, betrayal, and then the slow march of decay. Soot obscured the murals on the walls. When something moved in the shadows and Shaw stabbed out with the flashlight, the beam caught a glint of gold leaf and nothing else. Rats, he told himself. Just rats.

  Another sound came, and this time Shaw knew it wasn’t a rat. It was the man he was hunting: Patrick Monaghan. Shaw froze, but nothing else came back to him. He brushed the walkie at his belt, just to make sure it was there, and then eased forward. Boards groaned under his weight; when he shifted onto a span of ancient carpet, it squelched under his combat boots. Then something underfoot snapped, the sound running through the room like a gunshot. Shaw put a hand to the Springfield XD9 strapped to his thigh. With his other hand, he wiped his face and his neck, and his fingers came away gray with grit.

  “Shaw,” came the voice with its familiar smolder of heat. “You ok?”

  Shaw turned the light to see his partner. North eased sideways through a fire door that was partially blocked by a chesterfield; his muscular frame barely fit. North’s thatch of blond hair glittered in the flashlight’s beam. He was squinting, hiding eyes so pale blue that they looked like sunlight catching the rim of an icefield. Something squeaked inside the chesterfield as North slipped past it, and North threw a cautious glance at the rotting upholstery before continuing toward Shaw.

  “Fine,” Shaw said.

  “Did you forget your collection of pots and pans?” North mimed banging a drum. “Or do you have a brass band coming as backup?”

  “You’re talking too loud.”

  “I think we’re kind of past the point of whispering. You probably gave Patrick permanent hearing loss with all that racket.”

  “It’s not exactly like he doesn’t know we’re coming.”

  “If he doesn’t know now, he never will.”

  “It’s not like we haven’t dragged him out of here before.”

  “Just promise me we don’t have to have tea with him again.”

  “We didn’t have tea with him. He was hungry; I just wanted to get him something to eat before we dropped him off at the jail. Then we drove past that tea shop, and he said he’d never had a scone, and I thought—well, he really liked the tea. And he behaved pretty well.”

  “He broke two teacups.”

  “But he apologized.”

  “He poured honey on your pants.”

  “That was an accident.”

  “No, that was him trying to cop a feel because he’s got a big boy crush on you. And he picked the waitress’s pocket and stole eighty bucks in tips.”

  “Seventy-eight bucks.”

  “I’m rounding up.” North reached out, ran his thumb down the side of Shaw’s face, and held it up, dirty gray, for inspection. “And you need a bath.”

  Shaw played his flashlight across the spa: a verdigris brass sconce, a reception desk with its top scarred and splintered as though someone had gone at it with an axe, a sea-glass chandelier that, on rainy days, must have made this place feel like it was underwater. Light danced across the mural again, and now Shaw could make out details in spite of the patina of soot: a pale, delicate girl in profile, one hand holding a sword, the other holding what looked like a pinecone. Then a geometric design that looked very Art Deco to Shaw. Then, bookending the pale girl, a boy who must have been very, very, very gay, if the boots he was wearing were any clue.

  “Come on,” North said. “Before Patrick figures out a way to wriggle out of here.”

  “Why is she holding a pinecone?” Shaw asked, spotlighting the object in the girl’s hand for one last moment before North hustled him away.

  North chuckled. Then, after a glance at Shaw’s face, he let the chuckle die.

  “What?” Shaw said.

  “It’s not a pinecone.”

  “Well, a spindle then. Or a shuttle. Or whatever one of those weaving things is called.”

  “A spindle is used to spin thread,” North said, emphasizing the shared syllable.

  “Never mind. You don’t know either. I’ll look it up when we get home.”

  Shaw quickened his pace, outdistancing North by a yard as they moved past the splintered reception desk and toward the maze of rooms that lay beyond. He started a countdown in his head, beginning at twenty. No, Shaw reconsidered. Beginning at thirty. He had gotten down to seven before North caught up and grabbed Shaw’s elbow.

  “You don’t know your mythology.”

  “I know some myths,” Shaw said, trying to pull his elbow free without success. “I know all about Zeus and Ganymede.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “I know about Patroclus and Achilles.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “That’s kind of rude, the way you’re saying that.”

  “Really?” North said with a little smile as he passed Shaw and took the lead. “Oops.”

  Shaw frowned, playing with the zipper on the vest he was wearing. “Did you know that Achilles and Patroclus might have been gay?”

  “Might have been?” North snorted, then settled one hand heavily on Shaw’s chest when they reached the archway at the back of the lobby. He listened for a moment and then risked a quick glance beyond the archway. With a shrug, he stepped through, motioning for Shaw to follow. Shaw smiled; just like that, without even realizing it, North had done what he always did. “Achilles was calling Patroclus daddy so loudly they could hear them in Troy.”

  The distinct squeak of rubber soles on tile made Shaw and North both pause. Shaw’s pulse quickened, and he squeezed North’s wrist with one hand while unstrapping the Springfield with the other. North glanced at Shaw, glanced at the pistol, and shook his head. Shaw ignored him. North shook his head again, harder this time. Shaw just adjusted his grip on the gun, keeping the barrel pointed toward the ground.

  With a final, furious shake of his head, North drew out a can of pepper spray. He moved ahead quickly, but the massive Red Wing boots he wore were surprisingly quiet on the spa’s tile floors. Shaw followed, keeping the pistol aimed at the ground, his pulse thrumming so hard that the tips of his fingers tingled. They passed along a hallway, entered a massive steam room lined with tiers of benches, and kept going. The abandoned needles in one corner and the shoebox that somebody had taken a dump in were both signs that Patrick wasn’t the only one who used the Parnassus as refuge.

  The next room had several sunken pools where, in the spa’s heyday, men would have soaked and lounged and talked and perhaps done a few other things. The faint sti
ng of chlorine lingered even after all the years—or maybe that was Shaw’s imagination. Today, the pools were mostly empty; from where Shaw stood, he could see a quarter-inch of algae-covered water in the far end of one.

  Ahead of Shaw, North took another step into the room; the Red Wings scuffed the tile, and as Shaw got closer, the smell of leather and Irish Spring soap and American Crew hair wax banished the chlorine tang. North rolled his shoulders and looked around; Shaw waited.

  “He’s going to do something stupid,” Shaw said.

  “Not our boy Patrick,” North said. “He’s never done anything stupid before.”

  Another of those muffled squeaks came from one of the pools.

  “But this time,” Shaw said, smiling at North and raising his voice slightly, “he’s not thinking straight.”

  “Patrick never thinks straight. That’s why half the time we find him in some twenty-year-old fraternity boy’s bed.” North signaled for Shaw to move left, while he went right.

  “But this time,” Shaw insisted, moving opposite North, straining to hear another of those muffled squeaks, “this time, Patrick didn’t just settle for taking the frat boy’s wallet or watch. He didn’t just take a closeted guy’s wedding ring. That was small-time stuff, stuff Patrick knew we wouldn’t come down on him too hard for doing.”

  Another sound: the rustle of nylon. North tipped his head, his face intent, holding up one hand to halt Shaw. Shaw stopped, running a sweaty index finger along the Springfield’s frame.

  “But this time,” North said, “Patrick took a lot more than a frat boy’s spare change. Because Patrick’s just a donkey-cock dumbass.”

  “Hey!” The voice came from one of the pools up ahead.

  Shaw fought a grin at the sound of outrage in the protest. He altered his course, weaving between two of the pools while North came from the other side.

  “That’s right,” Shaw said. “Good thing he’s cute, because he’s a little slow.”

  “He’s not just slow,” North said. “He’s goddamn braindead. And he’s not cute either. He’s just got that big slab of meat that the frat boys want to swing on after they get a few beers in them. And personality, Jesus, like shit at the bottom of a bucket.”

  A man popped up from the next pool over, facing North, a knife in one hand. “Some friend, North McKinney, you big jerk. I made you a birthday card and I burned you that mix CD and I introduced you to Neutral Milk Hotel and . . . and . . .”

  “Come on, Patrick,” North said from the edge of the pool, dropping into a squat, the pepper spray held out. “The birthday card was construction paper and looked like a kindergartner made it. And we’ve talked about this: don’t start lists you can’t finish. Drop the knife and walk over here like a good donkey dick.”

  “Where’s Shaw?” Patrick demanded.

  Shaw took advantage of the other man’s focus on North to move closer. Patrick Monaghan was tall and broad shouldered, with dark curly hair and light brown skin that came from his father. His mother’s Irish heritage persisted only in his name and in the heavy spatter of freckles across his nose and cheeks. At the deep end of the pool, Shaw glanced down and saw the same shallow accumulation of water and algae; its fetid, green stink wafted up along the porcelain. Shaw holstered the gun and lowered himself, his combat boots barely making a ripple as he landed; North was slowly shaking his head without actually looking at Shaw.

  “Shaw’s nice,” Patrick was saying; his voice actually trembled, like he might be on the brink of tears. “Shaw wouldn’t call me . . . wouldn’t call me . . .”

  “Donkey dick?” North said. “That’s because Shaw’s even stupider than you are, Patrick. And you know what? That’s really saying something. Because you stole a cop’s badge, Patrick. That’s close to the stupidest fucking thing you could ever do, ok?”

  Patrick dropped his head and sniffled. He ran his free hand, the one without the knife, under his nose as Shaw crept closer. “He let me wear it,” Patrick said. “He said I’d make a great cop. He wasn’t mean like you, North, even though I made you that necklace.”

  “Out of dog teeth,” North said.

  Patrick ignored him. “He was nice to me. He bought me dinner at Olive Garden.”

  “Jesus, Patrick,” North said. “He’s a cop. And he’s got a wife. Remember? You slept on her side of the bed. Just put down the knife, ok? Before things get bad.”

  “I want to talk to Shaw. I want to—”

  Shaw set the Springfield’s muzzle at the base of Patrick’s neck, and the big man went still for an instant. Then he started to tremble. “Shaw,” Patrick whined, “Shaw, that’s scary. Don’t—don’t joke around like that, ok, Shaw? Don’t.”

  “Drop the knife,” Shaw said.

  “You’re mean. You’re meaner than North.”

  “Go on. The knife.”

  It clattered against the tile.

  “All right, Patrick,” North said. “Good donkey dick. Walk over here now. Don’t pay any attention to my partner, who I’m realizing right now might be the stupidest asshole in the entire world. Because I told him not to get out his gun. And I told him not to get in the fucking pool behind you.”

  “Technically,” Shaw said, “you only shook your head.”

  Patrick shuffled toward North, and as he did, Shaw holstered the pistol and picked up the knife. “You shouldn’t talk to each other like that,” Patrick said as he offered his wrists, anticipating cuffs. North motioned for Patrick to spin around, and when Patrick had done so, North slipped the zip cuffs into place and pulled them tight. “Hi, Shaw,” Patrick said. “That wasn’t cool, that thing with the gun. That was really mean.”

  “Sorry, Patrick. But you did have a knife. And the gun wasn’t loaded.”

  “Yeah, but I wouldn’t hurt you guys. I love you guys. We’re like best friends, right? We need to hang out more.”

  “Yeah, we’ve been kind of busy lately,” Shaw said. Something in his face must have given him away.

  “You guys are . . .” A boyish look of shock and glee transformed Patrick. “No way! That’s awesome, man. I’m so happy for you guys.”

  “Thanks, Patrick.”

  “Yeah, but, I don’t go by Patrick anymore.”

  “Oh yeah?” Shaw said, steering Patrick by the shoulder toward the steps that led out of the pool. “You got a nickname?”

  “No. I’m a whole new person.”

  “You’re still running the same fucking cons,” North said. “You’re still hiding in the same shitty spots.”

  “Yeah,” Patrick said, “but I’m different. I’m gender nonconforming now. My pronouns are ze and hir.”

  “Cool, Patrick,” Shaw said. “That’s really progressive of you.”

  “Truck.”

  “You got a truck?”

  “That’s my new name. Truck. It doesn’t have a gender. Like me.”

  “I think trucks are male,” North said. “Lots of guys hang those steel balls on their trucks.”

  “Yeah,” Patrick said, nodding, “but that’s just, like,” his face screwed up, “a phallocentric, gender-normative mindset. I’m beyond that.”

  “Testes-centric,” North said.

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind,” Shaw said.

  “This really isn’t cool,” Truck said. “That thing with the gun, that wasn’t cool either.”

  North met Shaw’s gaze and rolled his eyes.

  “Patrick,” Shaw began.

  “Truck.”

  “Right. Truck. Look, we’re your friends, right?”

  “You were my friends until you poked me with that gun.”

  “We’re still your friends, Truck. Do you know why we’re your friends?”

  “I like North more now. North didn’t do anything mean to me.”

  “We’re your friends,” Shaw said, “because instead of handing you over to the nice officers at the city jail, we got the Circuit Attorney to cut you a deal. Sh
e wants the badge you stole. And she wants to talk to you.”

  “Does she want to hear about how badass it is to be gender nonconforming?” Truck said. “Because it is. It’s really badass. I broke a guy’s knee the other day because he called me a queer.”

  North blew out a breath. “You can’t do stuff like that, Truck. You’re going to get arrested, and we can’t help you with something like that.”

  “But he was committing a hate crime.”

  “Yeah, well, lots of people are assholes, but that doesn’t make what they say a hate crime. And it doesn’t mean you can go around busting knees.”

  “Yeah, I can. It’s easy. You just straighten out the leg, and then you take something heavy and—”

  “I mean you shouldn’t go around doing that,” North said.

  “Oh.”

  North just sighed again.

  They escorted Truck back through the maze of rooms and out into the lobby, all three of them heading for the fire door that North had used.

  “You see that mural, Truck?” North said.

  “Don’t answer him,” Shaw said.

  “It’s just a question.”

  “I like Shaw more than I like North,” Truck said.

  “But Shaw put a gun on you,” North said.

  Conflicting desires warred in Truck’s face. Finally he said, “I might have seen a mural.”

  “You know what it is?”

  “It’s, like, a painting. On the wall.”

  “Yeah, but do you know what it’s about?”

  “A lady. Oh, and a guy! Do you think they’re boyfriend and girlfriend?”

  “Probably. Do you think Shaw knows what it’s about?”

  “Ok,” Shaw said. “Drop it.”

  “I’m just asking him a question,” North said.

  “You’re rubbing it in.”

  “I’m just asking.”

  “He probably knows,” Truck said with a confident glance at Shaw. “He knows everything.”

  “Did you hear that?” North said. “You know everything.”