Declination

by Gregory Ashe

  “And food,” Shaw said, feeling hungry for the first time in what felt like weeks. Things were moving on this case. They had the first breadcrumb in what he knew would be a long trail. But this trail would take Shaw to the people protecting the Slasher. So while North drove them back to the apartment, everything was back to normal on the outside. They had a fight about lunch. Shaw argued, persuasively in his own opinion, that North needed to go on a diet of all pickled foods for at least a week. North told Shaw that was utter bullshit

  And the whole time, Shaw let himself think about all the things he was going to do to the Slasher when he finally caught up to him.

  Chapter 9

  AT FIVE-THIRTY, the September sun was still hot enough to keep the day at a boil, and North was glad to find a shady spot two blocks away from Precinct Blue. Two blocks south of Precinct Blue, to be precise. The cop bar was on the wrong side of an invisible line that marked the north edge of downtown; from one block to the next, the city changed. St. Louis’s small, Midwestern downtown ended, and urban desolation sprang up in its place. So North parked the GTO south, on the safe side of the line. Because of the shade. And because he didn’t want to go back to driving the Caravan.

  As they walked the two blocks, North had to fight to keep from putting an arm around Shaw. That urge had been upon him all day: the need to interpose his body, as though something huge and cosmic—without really realizing it, North visualized this as a comet—were hurtling through space, headed directly for Shaw.

  He couldn’t put into words why he felt this. But the man North loved had changed over the last few months. It was a subterranean change. A seismic shifting that North could feel in invisible tremors even though nothing on the surface changed. North thought of Shaw taking a golf club to Tucker’s ribs. He thought of Shaw’s secret visit to the Potosi Correctional Center. But most vivid in his mind was the way Shaw had kicked Taylor in the back of the knee, and North wanted to wrap his arms around Shaw and brace himself for that fucking comet.

  But what he did instead was squeeze Shaw’s shoulder, just a friendly touch that made Shaw glance over at him and smile, and then North dropped his hand. It was 2018, but they were headed into a cop bar, and North knew they were already kicking a hornet’s nest by being private detectives. Add in the gay factor and they might as well ask to have their asses tossed on the street—at a minimum.

  “They’re not going to be happy to see us, are they?” Shaw said.

  “They might be happy to see me. I don’t know about you.”

  “I’m a ray of sunshine.”

  North snorted.

  “I’m a delight to everyone who meets me.”

  North rolled his eyes.

  “Jadon likes me.”

  “Jadon is a dumbshit.”

  “You like me.”

  North grinned. “I’m a dumbshit too, sometimes.”

  Shaw shaded his eyes, his attention fixed on their destination. “What are the chances they’ll tell us anything helpful?”

  “Willingly? Zero. They’re going to be pissed as fuck that we went in there and started asking questions.”

  “Oh.” Shaw seemed to consider the words. “This is a good plan.”

  North grinned again. “It’s a very good plan because how they get angry, why they get angry, that might still tell us a lot.”

  As they crossed the invisible line, the neatly kept blocks of urban life ended, and in their place came an expanse of weed-choked gravel, flattened styrofoam cups, cigarette butts, warped beer cans with their designs bleached from the sun, and hulking over everything, the shells of old buildings. The thought suddenly came to North that this was how everything ended. This was what would be left when every single human being was dead and gone: a shitty universe of Circle K cups that would never disintegrate. He tried to shake off the mood; it was just the fact that the afternoon had been frustrating, full of dead ends. Even the dossier, as detailed as it had been, offered no explanation of why Jadon might have shot himself—or might have been attacked—aside from speculative commentary about Jadon’s cases and where he might have made mistakes. North told himself he was just frustrated from the dead ends. And he told himself that again and again, staring out at the universe’s final dead end, weeds and vape pens and an abandoned gas station with a letterboard saying GOODBYE BEV WE WILL MISS U.

  “Maybe we should move here,” Shaw said, glancing around them and then pointing to a boarded up brick home. “That one could be cute.”

  “The one with a sign that says ASBESTOS DO NOT ENTER?”

  “Well, we’d get rid of the asbestos.”

  “Just to make sure we’re talking about the same building. You’re pointing at the one with the six-foot-high tag on the side that says KEVIN SUCKS COCK?”

  “We’ll have a talk with Kevin. About self-respect. And about safe sex.”

  “That means our neighbors will live in that building with the roof and the top floor falling in.”

  “They’re going to convert that floor into a greenhouse. And a terrace. For sunbathing. Naked.”

  “Naked sunbathing neighbors?”

  “Oh, and they grow really good pot in their greenhouse. And they like to share. And they’re swingers.”

  North was grinning, and all of a sudden he couldn’t remember why GOODBYE BEV WE WILL MISS U had seemed like one final scream dying into the vacuum of space. All he could think about was Shaw, who saw this space that could have passed for a demilitarized war zone, and his grin grew as he said, “Nudist swinger neighbors with an unlimited supply of good pot. This is your ultimate fantasy?”

  “Yep.”

  “Except you forgot about the room we keep downstairs.”

  “Oh, right. Your wine cellar.”

  “No, it’s past the wine cellar. We built it with a secret door. A bookcase swings open.”

  Now Shaw was grinning. “I don’t think I knew about the secret bookcase.”

  “That’s because I blindfold you every time before we go downstairs,” North said, letting his grin fade, his voice drop into a lower, rasping register. “And we’ve got all sorts of toys. I can get you to make unbelievable noises.”

  A forest fire was moving across Shaw’s cheekbones, and he tried to say something and just squeaked.

  “I know, baby,” North said, smirking as he patted Shaw’s arm. “I know.”

  “I didn’t . . . that’s not really my . . . I’m not sure . . .”

  “Ok.”

  “I’d be willing to . . . I mean, if that’s what you want . . .”

  “Sure.”

  “It’s just never . . . I hadn’t really thought . . .”

  “That’s a pothole,” North said.

  Shaw swerved, barely avoiding it, but his eyes were glazed. On the next step, he crashed into an overturned bucket.

  Snapping his fingers in front of Shaw’s eyes, North said, “Playtime’s over, sweetheart.”

  “Well,” Shaw squeaked again, this time clearing his throat. In a slightly more normal voice he managed to say, “Well, yeah. I know. I’m a professional.”

  “Of course you are.”

  “I hate you sometimes.”

  “I know, baby.”

  “Payback is a bitch, North. Remember that.”

  “Ok.”

  “I’m just saying you shouldn’t tease.”

  “Who said I was teasing?”

  That time, Shaw did walk into a pothole, and North had to catch him to keep him from turning an ankle.

  Precinct Blue was a squat cement building with no ornamentation and great security: cameras at every angle you could imagine, and enormous floodlights that must have painted the parking lot as bright as day. It was a cop bar, so that made sense. Without the small sign above the door, spelling out the bar’s name in simple blue letters, North could have mistaken it for a militia bunker. Or a fallout silo. Or just a dump.

  When they pushed into the bar, though, it
was different from what North expected. Clean. Well-lighted—not bright, but not dark either, with a steady, suffused glow that would make drinking easy without making you feel like you had to crawl down a hole to do it. St. Louis sports memorabilia—Cardinals and Blues exclusively, although judging by a few bare spots, North guessed they had once featured the Rams too—mixed on the walls with framed newspapers celebrating and commemorating notable cases and police officers. North would have put money that the fire code for this place said two hundred people—and they had enough tables and chairs to do it right. Tonight, early on a Saturday, they had a quarter of that, men and a few women spread out.

  Together, Shaw and North moved to the bar, where an older man with a military-style buzz cut wiped glasses. Six of the stools were occupied by men around the same age as the bartender—they’d never see fifty again, although North couldn’t tell for sure beyond that. Two of the stools were occupied by women.

  As North and Shaw slid onto stools at the end of the bar closest to the door, the bartender came toward them, still wiping a glass. “I think you boys are in the wrong place,” he said.

  North made a show of looking around. “We’re all right.”

  “I’ll have a Coke,” Shaw said.

  “Boys—”

  “Lots of ice. Actually, medium ice. North, do you want a Coke?”

  “No. And you shouldn’t be having one either.”

  “Just the one Coke, then. Medium ice.”

  The bartender’s hand had stopped; the towel hung limply out of the glass. “I think you boys ought to go.”

  “Sure,” Shaw said. “Right after I have my Coke.”

  “You’re already hopped up,” North said. “Don’t get started on soda.”

  “See, this is what he always does,” Shaw said to the bartender. “He’ll have a Schlafly. Do you have their dry-hopped APA?”

  The bartender showed his teeth. “Does this look like a place with dry-hopped APA?”

  “Just the Coke, then.”

  “And a Bud Lite,” North said. “I don’t want you drinking alone.”

  The bartender moved back down the bar to a group of men who had watched the whole exchange with obvious interest. They weren’t the only ones waiting to see what happened; a spot between North’s shoulder blades itched, and he could tell out of the corner of his eye that just about every eye in the room was fixed on them.

  “I told you this was stupid,” North said.

  “Hey, wait, I was the one who said—”

  Before Shaw could finish, one of the men at the end of the bar got off his stool and came toward them. He lowered himself onto a seat next to North and tipped his glass in greeting. He was a compact man with dark skin and a huge smile he flashed at North and then Shaw in turn; his hat said Operation: Desert Storm.

  “Are you the welcome wagon?” North said.

  The man laughed. “I suppose I am.” His voice had some of the music of North City. “Do you boys feel welcome?”

  “I feel right at home,” North said.

  “I feel gassy,” Shaw said. North threw him a look, and Shaw said, “What? We’ve been eating junk lately.”

  Desert Storm grinned. “I understand Jim already told you this probably wasn’t the best place to stop for a drink.”

  “We tried to leave,” Shaw said, “but this place is a maze. We got lost. I had to send up a signal flare. It was a whole thing. Better just wait it out here.”

  “And if you spend your whole life looking for the best, you’ll miss a lot of good things on the way,” North added. “This might not be the best place to get a drink, but it’s a good place. That’s enough for me.”

  “You guys like playing it smart.”

  “He’s talking about you,” North said to Shaw.

  “Me? You’re the one who had to be philosophical, ‘you’ll miss a lot of good things on the way.’ Laying it on a little thick, don’t you think? Just because you got a C- on that paper on Sartre, you don’t have to overcompensate by—”

  “What do you boys want?”

  “A Coke.”

  “That APA actually does sound pretty good.”

  “It’s almost going to be a shame letting Troy and his buddies throw you guys out,” Desert Storm said. “Nobody ever tries being smart in here.” He eased himself up off the stool. “I’ll tell you really clearly, just in case we’ve been misunderstanding each other: this is a bar for cops. You two need to leave. And if you don’t, we’ll help you on your way.”

  “We want to talk to somebody,” North said. “And then we’ll go.”

  “You’re talking to me, aren’t you?”

  “We’ve got questions about Jadon Reck. He’s a cop who was—”

  “I know who he is.” Desert Storm’s eyes had gone dark and still. “You need to leave right now. Nobody’s talking to you about Reck. Nobody’s talking to you about anything.”

  “He was my boyfriend,” Shaw said with a pitch and intensity that turned something nasty loose in North’s chest. “He didn’t try to kill himself. Somebody tried to kill him, and I want to know why.”

  Desert Storm stood there, one hand on the bar, his head swiveling toward his buddies and then back to North and Shaw. He chewed the inside of his mouth for a minute, and then he said, “Whatever you think you’re doing, you’re only going to make things worse. So stay out of this. Let the right people handle it.”

  “You know,” Shaw said, leaning past North in his eagerness. “You know he didn’t—”

  “Roger,” a man at the end of the bar called. “Look at this.”

  North followed the man’s gesture and looked at the TV hung in the corner. On the screen, the evening news showed a woman being led down the street in handcuffs. It took North a heartbeat to recognize her as Anna Dzeko. At the bottom of the screen, a banner announced Circuit Attorney Arrested for Cop-Shooting.

  North heard Detective Taylor’s voice again: We’ve already got a way to keep her quiet.

  His attention fixed on the bar, where men were speaking in low, angry voices, their glasses clattering across tabletops, their chairs squeaking as they adjusted their position. They weren’t looking at North and Shaw yet, but the confusion and fear and rage in the room was already toxic. In a few minutes, they’d want an outlet.

  “We need to go,” North said, grabbing Shaw by the arm.

  Desert Storm sighed and shook his head. North wasn’t sure why until he wheeled around, dragging Shaw behind him, and saw that a pair of men had moved to block the exit.

  “Take it outside,” Jim, the bartender, shouted.

  But the men didn’t move, and they met North’s gaze without blinking. North turned, one arm stretched in front of Shaw, trying to keep as much of the bar in view as he could while putting himself between Shaw and danger. A couple of men from the far end of the bar stood up, moving toward North and Shaw. One of them wore a sleeveless denim jacket; the other wore an All-Season Insulation polo, his hand buried in his pocket. A knife, North guessed.

  Desert Storm shook his head. “Troy, they’re just asking a few stupid questions.”

  The man in the sleeveless denim jacket said, “Shut up, Roger.”

  Jim called from behind the bar again, “Take it outside,” but it sounded like a suggestion—and it sounded like Jim wasn’t going to press the issue.

  “We could do like he says,” North said. “We could take it outside.”

  “Who are you?” Troy said. He raised his voice so it carried through the bar; in the background, Tina Turner was on the jukebox, wailing about something, and North felt a flicker of amusement that the cop bar even had Tina available.

  “I’m a level four psychic,” Shaw said. “And I think I’m a partial reincarnation of Rasputin. The sexy part.”

  “I’m the milkman,” North said. “I stopped in to see your mommy after daddy went to work.”

  “That’s rude,” Shaw said. “And sexist.”

 
; “It’s not sexist,” North said.

  Shaw waved away the reply. “It’s the 21st century. You should have said, ‘I’m the milkman, and I made sure your daddy got plenty of vitamin D on the weekends.’”

  “That’s just stupid—” North began.

  Troy threw an ugly, lazy, telegraphed punch. He was barely close enough to connect with the blow, and all North had to do was lean back. The fist whistled past his chest, catching only air. North’s blood was up; adrenaline pounded threw him. He rocked forward, ready to throw a punch of his own, when hands caught him from behind. Then, too late, he realized that the punch had never been meant to hit him. It had been a distraction.

  The guys behind him were big; they had leverage, and they each had an arm. Dragging him back, they maneuvered him toward a table, and then they forced him down, his chest connecting with the sticky rings left by glasses, a scattering of pretzels and peanuts from the bar mix crushed against his ribs. North smelled stale hops and yeast. His brain blinked in and out. He could see Shaw, who still hadn’t been touched yet, backing away carefully. He waited for punches. He waited for something worse—the things men did to other men, things they’d claim they would never want to do. He waited for hands on his belt buckle. Hands on the waistband of his jeans. He struggled again, a reaction to his own fear, and only succeeded in sending sharp jolts of pain through his shoulders.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” Shaw said.

  Troy took a step; Shaw stepped back.

  “You shouldn’t have hurt him.”

  “I’m not too worried about him,” Troy said, taking another step. The man in the All-Season polo had cut across the bar at an angle and was now coming at Shaw from the side, a switchblade low in his hand.

  “Shaw,” North grunted.

  “I see him,” Shaw said, moving backward as he spoke. To Troy, he continued, “My friend’s going to be embarrassed when we get out of here. It’s not his fault; he was outnumbered, and you got him from behind. But he’s still going to feel bad about it. He’s going to blame himself. He’s going to need to work on his self-image. He’ll have all sorts of thoughts about how he wasn’t strong enough or quick enough. But we both know that’s bullshit. And when I tell him it’s bullshit, he’s going to sulk like you wouldn’t believe.”