The Two Gentlemen of Altona (Playing the Fool, #1)

by Lisa Henry

  If Henry had come this way, he hadn’t left any obvious signs. At least none that Mac could read. The track was covered in wet leaves that were slippery underfoot. Birds called to one another in the woods. If he really had been an Apache tracker, even one who’d relocated to Indiana, he might have known what type of birds they were.

  When he rounded the last bend in the track and saw Henry standing at the edge of the lake, Mac was overcome with relief. Which was overcome immediately by anger.

  “What the fuck, Henry? Do you have any idea what witness protection is all about?”

  Henry turned. “Um, is it something about not yelling the words ‘witness protection’ where anyone could hear them?”

  Mac strode up to him. “You’re a fucking idiot. You’re gonna make it very easy for them to kill you, you know that?”

  Henry’s eyes widened. “Oh.”

  “Oh,” Mac repeated heavily. “Jesus, how have you stayed alive this long?”

  “I happen to be very good at talking my way out of things,” Henry told him. He wrinkled his nose and picked at the mesh in his damp shirt. “Also, I kind of figured that if anyone knew where we were, I’d already be dead, right?”

  Mac drew a breath. “You’ve got that much faith in my ability to keep you safe?”

  “Well.” Henry dragged his bare toe through the mud. “Um, I figured you’d be dead too. First. By heroically throwing yourself in front of a bullet meant for me. Is that a compliment?”

  “In a weird way.”

  Henry smiled slightly, then turned to look at the lake again. “It’s kinda nice here. If you like peace and quiet and stuff.”

  “Who doesn’t like peace and quiet?”

  “Oh, just about everyone who’s ever lived in a city.” Henry stuck his hands in his pockets, which made his jeans ride down. “I like cities. I like that if I get hungry at three in the morning, I can take a walk down the street and there will still be some place open. I like that there’s always people around, and traffic, and sirens. Makes me feel like I’m a part of something.”

  “You just don’t like to be alone.”

  Henry shrugged.

  “My mom’s like that.” Mac watched a line of ants marching across a flat rock by his feet. Envied them the order in their lives. “She hates coming here, because my dad can spend hours a day just fishing. Just staring at the lake and saying nothing. But my mom, she likes to be around people. It takes her half a day to do the grocery shopping, since she stops to catch up with everyone. She likes to talk. Not as much as you do though.”

  Henry flashed him another smile. “Well, I’m a special case.”

  “You sure are.” He resisted the urge to reach out and touch Henry. To maybe slide his arms around him and pull him close. To rest his chin on his shoulder while they both gazed at the early morning light gleaming on the surface of the lake. Because, shit. Wanting to fuck him was bad enough. Wanting to hold him? Where the hell did that come from?

  “I’m not really good with being alone,” Henry said at last. He squatted down to pick up a stick. Drew a line in the mud with it. “Never have been.”

  “You’ve chosen an oddly solitary life, then. Nothing like keeping secrets to put distance between people.”

  “I’ve got my friends. They know me.”

  “No boyfriend?” Mac asked. “Or girlfriend?”

  Henry stood. He tossed the stick into the lake. “Are you asking my orientation, Agent McGuinness?”

  “Not exactly. Just trying to get a fix on you, I guess.”

  Wondering if there’s anyone you give a damn about, who gives a damn about you.

  “Oh, I see. Wondering if I was playing you last night? The same way I played Gloria Maxfield?” Henry’s smile was thin.

  “Can you blame me?”

  “No.” Henry turned away again, his black bangs falling over his forehead.

  Mac placed his foot slowly on the rock, crushing half the line of ants. Try some chaos on for size, you fuckers. He immediately felt guilty. “Come back to the cabin, Henry.”

  Henry studied the water a moment more. “Okay.”

  They walked up the track together. Henry seemed quieter, somehow diminished. He had his hands shoved into the pockets of his thin jeans, and kept his gaze down.

  “You got any family?”

  Henry hesitated before answering. “Not anymore.” He lifted his head. “You do, though.”

  “Yeah, my parents own this place.”

  Henry nodded. “And you’ve got a . . . niece, right? I would have said about twelve at first, but I’m pretty sure she’s no older than nine.”

  “How the hell could you know that?”

  “Club Werewolf,” Henry said. “That shit is so hot with twelve-year-old girls right now. But the selection of DVDs under the TV? Adults don’t come to fishing cabins to watch documentaries about dinosaurs and the solar system. And most twelve-year-olds who are into Club Werewolf have outgrown their dinosaur phase. So you’ve got one smart kid in the family, reading at least a few years above her level. Right?”

  “She’s eight. My sister’s kid.”

  “Close.”

  Mac stopped. Angled his head to look at Henry. “How’d you learn to do that? That Sherlock Holmes shit?”

  Henry shrugged. “Practice, I guess. I watch people. Also, I have a friend who spent a few years as a psychic. She taught me a lot.”

  “A fake psychic?”

  “C’mon, Mac, what other kind is there?” Henry lifted two fingers to his temple and frowned in concentration. “I’m getting a letter. It’s the letter ‘M.’ Someone . . . someone close to you with the letter ‘M.’ Wait, it could be a ‘J.’ Does that mean anything to you, Mac?”

  Mac raised his eyebrows. “My grandfather’s name was Jack.”

  “Of course it was.” Henry lowered his hand. “‘J’ and ‘M’ are the most common letters for given names to start with. Every cold reader knows that.”

  “Fine.” Not that he believed in all that supernatural nonsense or anything, but some of those people were pretty damn convincing. “So what about those psychics on TV who can tell people exactly how many family members they have, or—”

  “You mean the people who prepaid for tickets?” Henry’s smile widened. “With their address on the billing details? Those same people who had some randoms turn up to their house the week or so before the show, to ask them to take a survey or buy a vacuum or something? The ones that could see inside to the family portrait on the wall? Or maybe you mean those people whose wedding, funeral, and birth announcements in the local paper are freely available online. Or maybe you mean the ones who are so excited to be going to see a famous psychic that they tell the person in line next to them how they really hope to reach Great-Aunt Maud tonight.”

  “Huh.”

  “And everything else, editing.” Henry waved his hand. “It really is that simple. The only trick with any con is to give people what they want. What they already believe.”

  A leaf spiraled down between them.

  “So what were you giving Gloria Maxfield?”

  Henry looked at the leaf. “Gloria isn’t too good at being alone either.”

  “So she pays for your company. Only she doesn’t know it.”

  “She knows it, and she’s happy to do it. Does she know it’s a con? Hell no. But does she get her money’s worth?” His smile turned cocky. “I’ve never had any complaints.”

  Yeah. Mac figured as much. It still made Henry little more than a rentboy. Maybe not the sort who stood out on a corner waiting for a trick, but not that much different where it counted. It was still the kind of dirty work that would eat away your dignity, and your soul, if you had either to begin with.

  “So did you deduce anything about Dean Maxfield while you were staying with Gloria?”

  Henry glanced at him sharply. “Barely saw the guy.”

  “All you saw in my cabin was a kid’s book, and suddenly you knew how old the kid was and her relat
ionship to me.”

  “I didn’t like him. So I didn’t pay much attention to him when he was around. Just waited for him to leave.”

  “And you didn’t know who he was?”

  “No, Mac. I’ve been telling the post office for years to pin up photos of local mob members, so I’ll be able to recognize them when they come over for milk and cookies, but no dice.”

  Mac didn’t press the subject.

  “So what are we gonna do today?” Henry asked. “We could go back to the cabin and watch When Dinosaurs Ruled. Or you could read aloud to me from Club Werewolf. But you have to do all the voices, Mac. All the voices.”

  “Can’t stand shit like Club Werewolf.”

  “Why?”

  “Why do these girls want to read about stuff that isn’t real? They want to get themselves trapped in some fantasy world where it’s all vampires and werewolves and people doing magic . . .” Mac trailed off. “That’s what I like about Cory. She’s interested in science. Computers. I try to encourage that. But then she has this Club Werewolf side too.”

  Henry was staring at him. “She’s eight.”

  “I don’t want her growing up to be one of those middle-aged women fantasizing about some vampire biting her. Twimoms, or whatever.”

  “So she’s not allowed to have an imagination?”

  “I just don’t go in for all that stuff. Sci-fi, fantasy, that futuristic hogwash where the characters travel through time or—”

  “Hogwash? What are you, seventy?”

  “I like things to be realistic.”

  Henry whistled. “You’ve got issues, Mac.”

  “I do not.”

  “Kind of a tight-ass.”

  “Please.”

  “Tighter than a mouse getting fucked by a dog, as Stacy would say.”

  “Who’s Stacy?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Mmm. Sometimes I miss the old interrogation techniques.”

  “Thumbscrews, iron maidens? You could probably get permission to waterboard me, right? Or is that so 2007?”

  “Well, there’s a lake. And no witnesses.”

  Henry bumped him lightly with his shoulder. Almost lightly enough that it could have been an accident. “You can try smacking me around, Mac. I might like it.”

  “Hmph.”

  Mac watched Henry take a deep breath; his chest swelled and the rip in his shirt widened. Henry had washed the shirt and put it on without drying it, and his nipples were visible through the thin fabric.

  “I don’t think you would,” Mac said quietly, feeling that strange rush of . . . what was it? Protectiveness? He preferred to think of it as superiority. He thought he could tell the difference now between Henry joking freely because he was relaxed and having fun, and Henry teasing because he was on the defensive. And right now Henry, who’d been relaxed moments before, looked tense. “I don’t think you like anything too rough.”

  The sun came through the trees, and Henry shaded his eyes with one hand. He looked away after a few seconds. “Yeah, well. I’m kidding. So it doesn’t matter if I would or not.”

  “Why invite people to treat you like shit?”

  “This isn’t The Prince of Tides here. Not your job to crack the secrets of my shadowy past and discover what makes me tick.

  Mac stepped forward. “Who says I give a shit about your past?” Henry edged sideways as he came closer. “I care about what you know now.” He was pleased to see Henry looked nervous, or at least confused. He gripped Henry’s shoulder—not hard, not yet—and backed Henry slowly up to a nearby tree. As soon as Henry hit the trunk, Mac dug his fingers into his shoulder and leaned close to his ear. “You think I couldn’t make you tell me what I want to know?” He moved one leg very carefully between Henry’s, not touching him at all, but close. So close. “You think you’d like it if I did? If I made you?”

  Henry swallowed. Mac watched the slight outline of his Adam’s apple as it traveled up, then down. Henry opened his mouth as if to speak, but then all he did was breathe harshly, rubbing his back against the bark. His jeans did nothing to conceal his hardening cock.

  Mac’s lips were almost touching Henry’s ear. He shouldn’t do this. Couldn’t throw his job away because he was horny at the fishing cabin. Yet as he stared at the pulse jerking in Henry’s neck, he didn’t care. He wanted to hear the kid say something sincere, and if it happened to be a sincere plea to be allowed to come, all the better.

  “What’s the matter, Henry?” he whispered.

  Henry gulped again, and didn’t make any effort to push Mac away, even when Mac moved his hand from Henry’s shoulder to his throat and applied a light pressure.

  “You talk all the time,” Mac continued without raising his voice. “You say what people want to hear. Except to me. You never say what I want to hear. You know why?” He brushed his lips against the edge of Henry’s ear, and Henry shivered. “Because I want to hear the truth.”

  Henry gave a soft exhale, almost a whimper. He struggled halfheartedly, his hand brushing Mac’s arm, sending a jolt to Mac’s cock. He closed his eyes, relaxing, then opened his eyes again. His laugh was a little forced, a little anxious. “I think you’re weird, Mac.”

  Mac let him go. Offered a grin that matched Henry’s for cockiness. Glanced down at the front of Henry’s pants. “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe you do like things a little rough.”

  Henry didn’t look amused.

  “I figured we’d go into town today.” Mac stepped away from the tree. “Find a way to contact Val.” He started toward the cabin and heard Henry’s footsteps behind him.

  “Hey, can we get eggs?”

  Mac kept walking. “Eggs?”

  “Yeah.” Henry came up beside him. “I forgot to get them the other day.”

  “With any luck, we won’t be here long enough to get through a carton of eggs.”

  “I can make it happen. I love eggs.”

  Mac shook his head. “Fine, Henry. We can get eggs.”

  “There’s a great little store on Quincy with free-range brown eggs.”

  Mac glanced at him. So Henry did know Altona. Or he’d looked it up.

  “There’s a pay phone outside, too,” Henry said. “You could try Val from there.”

  “I didn’t know pay phones were still around.”

  “They might have gotten rid of it. But last time I was there, they had a thing of cumin from, like, the seventies. They cling to the past. Do you have quarters?”

  Mac patted his pockets. Stopped. “I don’t even have my wallet.” Which was all wrong. It had been in his pocket moments ago. He searched the ground.

  Henry held the wallet out to him.

  Mac stared at him, then slowly reached out and took it.

  Henry smirked. “I had to do something to entertain myself during your creepy cop, horny cop routine.”

  Fuck him. Seriously fuck him.

  Henry clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s go get eggs.”

  Grocery shopping with the FBI was fun.

  “The thing with eggs,” Henry told Mac as they stood in the dairy aisle of the grocery store, “is that they can be so many other things.”

  “Like what? Chickens?”

  “Well sure, if you leave them long enough.” Henry opened a carton and checked that none were broken. “But they can be fried, or boiled, or poached, or coddled, or—”

  “You’re just making shit up now.” Mac grabbed a box of butter. Henry watched him gaze longingly at it, then put it back and pick up something with the word “Lite” on the package. “What the hell is coddled?”

  “It’s like hardly cooked.” He checked the next carton. “You know, for Caesar salad. And that’s just how you can cook them, before you even get into what you can make with them. Like omelets, or frittatas, or—”

  “Okay.” Mac narrowed his eyes. “Whatever point you’re making, please stop now.”

  “I’m making the point that eggs are versatile. And I was making it quite
well, I thought.”

  “Just pick some damned eggs.”

  A few minutes later, standing in line at the checkout, Mac grinned suddenly.

  “What?” Henry added a chocolate bar to their basket of groceries and put some gum in his pocket out of habit.

  “Eggs,” Mac said, “the blank slate of cookery. A hundred different disguises. No wonder you like them.”

  “Ah.” He smiled. “Are you going to tell me I’m rotten as well?”

  “More cracked.” Mac elbowed him and lowered his voice. “Put the gum back or pay for it.”

  Henry put the gum in with the rest of the stuff. “Just trying to save you a buck.”

  “Risk to reward ratio.” Mac pulled out his wallet. “It’s a thing you really should consider. You’d get us outed for the price of a pack of gum?”

  Henry bit his lip. “Outed?” He looked around. “Dr. Freud. Paging Dr. Freud.”

  Mac rolled his eyes and paid for the groceries.

  “Speaking of being outed,” Henry said as they lingered outside the store, “are you sure you should call Bosslady? Because I’m pretty certain you might as well hire a skywriter to write, ‘We’re in Altona, bitches!’ across the Indianapolis skyline if you make that call.”

  Mac didn’t even crack a smile. “I know.”

  Henry sat on the hood of their stolen car.

  “Risk versus reward,” Mac said at last. “I call Val, maybe she tells me it’s been sorted out, and we can head back to the city, get you into protective custody, and get Dean Maxfield forty to life. But if it’s not sorted out . . .”

  “Right.” Henry nodded. “But if we wait a day or two, we’ll have to risk another drive into town. In this car. Which sooner or later some bored local cop will check out.”

  Mac stared at the pay phone for a while, as if he were waiting for its opinion as well. He shook his head at last. “I don’t know. Fuck, I don’t know.”

  Henry wasn’t used to seeing him so vulnerable. “Um . . .”