Pretty Pretty Boys

by Gregory Ashe

  Already, a group of angry men and women were streaming across the grounds of the North Quad, pushing past a pair of security officers—older women in fluorescent yellow vests, squawking desperately into their walkies as they waved for the Volunteers to stop. Cars, trucks, and vans, abandoned by the Volunteers, choked the street and blocked traffic. Muttering a few swears, Somers swerved and brought the Impala to a screeching halt. He killed the engine, threw open the door, and got out running.

  Hazard ran after him. The Volunteers had were pressed up around a building—on the stone above the door were engraved the words Division of Social Sciences—and the men at the front of the crowd were hammering on the door. There had to be at least twenty of them, more men than women, and it was obvious from their efforts that #whitejustice and Naomi’s call to action were not idle words—these men and women weren’t just angry, they weren’t just outraged. They truly intended, Hazard judged from how forcefully they were battering the door, to break into the building, storm Fukuma’s office, and then—Hazard didn’t a quick mental assessment as they ran. From what he could see, at least two of the men openly carried firearms. How many wore concealed weapons? Six? Ten? The majority, Hazard decided. And if they weren’t afraid to kill a public figure like Fukuma in full daylight, then they wouldn’t be afraid to take a shot at an interfering officer of the peace.

  “Somers,” he shouted, but Somers didn’t turn back. The slender blond man was faster than Hazard by a fair margin. In college, and then more seriously once joining the force, Hazard had pushed himself past the scrawny, nerdy boy he had been in high school. He had packed on muscle, and he had conditioned himself to run a good pace at the mile. But Somers was a natural athlete, and it showed in his easy lope, even as he pressed himself to run his fastest. Hazard sucked in air and tried to catch up; he hoped Somers’s athleticism wouldn’t get the man killed.

  His hope crumbled, though, as Somers reached the edge of the crowd. The men and women on the fringe looked maddened, even rabid, as they screamed their insults at the building. They were filled with the same adrenaline and exhilaration as the rest of the mob, but all that energy was pent up, with no release—they were too far from the door to help. Hazard saw the moment of Somers’s mistake. The detective stopped short of the crowd, his face flushed with adrenaline. Somers seemed to be trying to make a decision. He shouted something and then, oddly, he cast a glance over his shoulder at Hazard.

  Hazard waved frantically for Somers to back away from the crowd.

  Somers, with a cocky shrug, launched himself at the rear line of the volunteers. He shouted something—Hazard was pretty sure it was, “Police!”—and then the shit hit the fan.

  As Somers reached the line of Volunteers, they turned on the detective like someone had opened the floodgates to hell. Men and women swarmed the detective. Hazard, still running, watched as a pot-bellied man landed a roundhouse punch on Somers’s jaw. It was like watching someone ring the Liberty Bell. Somers rocked on his feet, and then his knees folded and he started to fall. A small, rat-faced man whipped out a knife as long as Hazard’s arm, and the blade looked like a sheet of white fire as it rose in the sunlight.

  The knife went up, and up, and up. And then it started to come down, right towards Somers’s unprotected torso.

  THE NEXT FEW MOMENTS, HAZARD never fully remembered. He’d have glimpses, like fragments of a broken image he could never reassemble. Once or twice, years later, he dreamed of those moments, and his bedmate at the time had banished him to another room and another bed for a week. He never knew—at least, he never could fully explain to himself—why he hadn’t drawn his .38 and shot the son of the bitch with the knife.

  The center of all those fragments of memory was Somers, his lip split, blood trickling down his chin and into the hollow of his throat. Peripheral was the knife. First, the knife was moving up, catching the sunlight along its length, and then the knife was coming down. Somers was lying there, unmoving, his eyes blank and unseeing. And the knife was still coming.

  And the next thing, the next full memory, was Hazard standing on the steps outside the Social Sciences building with a ring cleared around him. Two men lay on the ground, still and stiff as if they’d stretched out that way on purpose: one was the pot-bellied man who’d clocked Somers, and the other was the rat-faced man with the knife. The knife lay a few yards away, nestled in the grass. Hazard’s chest hurt. His hands hurt. His split knuckles had opened again, and blood covered his fingers and soaked the cuff of his shirt. And every single Ozark Volunteer was looking at him as though he were feral, a lion escaped from his cage.

  “Uh,” Somers groaned. The blond man propped himself upright, stared at the crowd, and then his gaze shifted to Hazard. Thoughts and emotions streamed across Somers’s face too quickly for Hazard to decipher, and Somers scrambled to his feet. Behind the blond man, churning across the North Quad came a dozen uniformed police officers. Unlike Hazard and Somers, these officers had taken the time to prepare for crowd control: they wore body armor and helmets and they carried police batons and pepper spray. They marched in units of four, obviously having trained and prepared for this. Martha Cravens was marching at the rear, and in spite of her heavy hourglass figure and the vague association her appearance inspired with grandmothers and aprons and sugar cookies, she looked ready to chew nails.

  “Don’t any of you move,” Hazard said. He was surprised at how even his voice sounded, even though it came from low in his chest, so low it was scraping bottom.

  Not a single one of the Volunteers moved.

  “You’re bleeding,” Somers said in a whisper.

  Hazard glanced his hand, the knuckles puffy and aching, and shrugged.

  “No,” Somers said. “You’re bleeding.”

  And then, for the first time, Hazard noticed that the pain in his chest was a hot line. He looked down and saw the neat cut running from one shoulder at a sharp angle to his abdomen. It ended less than an inch from the scar that Mikey Grames had left, and Hazard’s button-up and undershirt hung limp and bloody, exposing muscle and the stiff, dark hairs across his chest. Unsure of what to say, Hazard settled for another shrug.

  At that moment, Cravens and the uniformed officers reached them. Cravens shouted orders, and the officers followed them with quick, grim efficiency. The Volunteers stirred to life as the arrests began to happen, and some of the younger ones tried to escape by leaping off the stairs and sprinting back to their vehicles, but more and more police were arriving at the soon, and in a short while the Volunteers’ vigilante mob had been led away.

  An ambulance had come with Cravens, as well as a fire truck. Moseby, the bull-necked firefighter who had been controlling the arson scene and whom Somers had punched in the nose, stood at the edge of the crowd, watching with his arms folded over his chest. His nose still had a purple-blue tinge to it, and it looked about twice its normal size. Ron McClinckie was there too, scurrying through the crowd, often just the top of his head with its thinning blond hair showing through the crowd.

  Four EMTs arrived, as well as two paramedics. Most of them clustered around the fallen men, who still lay stretched out on the steps, but Hazard found himself led away by one paramedic who sat him on a bench, opened a first aid kit, and started cleaning the wounds on his hand.

  The woman was thin and so tan that she looked like she was ninety-percent leather. Her graying hair was cut short, even shorter than Somers, and she wore it in stiff spikes. As she cleaned the gouges on Hazard’s knuckles, she said, “What the hell did you do? You didn’t get these from throwing a couple of punches.”

  Hazard ignored the question; Somers was hovering near the bench, close enough to hear, and that was enough reason to keep his mouth shut.

  “You did a number on those boys,” the woman said after another minute. “That’s what you did. Knocked their asses past last Sunday. Not saying they didn’t deserve it because they did.”

  “So what are you saying?” Hazard asked.

&n
bsp; “I’m saying I’m a cheat at cards, and I hope you never catch me.” The woman flashed a smile that was missing more than a few teeth. “You want to take that shirt off? It’s nothing but a rag now anyway, and it’ll make it a hell of a lot easier to clean that cut.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Like hell you’re fine,” Somers burst in. “Take off your damn shirt so she can clean the damn cut.”

  Hazard cast a glance at his partner; Somers seemed unusually agitated, and his face was pale as he paced alongside the bench.

  “Well?” Somers said, gesturing in frustration. “Take it off!”

  With a wince, Hazard peeled the bloody cotton from his chest and slipped off the ruined clothes. The heat and the summer sun pounded on his back, and Hazard felt strangely vulnerable—it had something to do with wearing slacks and a pair of dress shoes while being naked from the waist up. “Hold this, would you?” he asked as he passed his jacket—it had escaped the attack unscathed, somehow—to Somers.

  “Not bad,” the paramedic said, appraising the cut with a practiced eye as she worked. The alcohol pads stung as they touched the lacerated flesh, and the smell of the disinfectant filled the air. “You need stitches, but—what the hell is this?” One gloved finger pointed at the old scar, the half-formed mark of Mikey Grames’s initial, on Hazard’s belly.

  Somers had gone even paler. He looked like he might faint, and Hazard didn’t want his jacket on the ground. Maybe, Hazard thought, I should ask for it back.

  “Old war wound,” Hazard answered absently, his attention still focused on Somers.

  “Looks like a story,” the paramedic said. “So, you new in town?”

  “What? No. I mean, yes, but not really.”

  “Well, which is it?”

  “I grew up here. Just moved back.”

  “Thought so.”

  “What does that mean?” Somers said.

  The paramedic shrugged. Her touch was cold but gentle as she taped a bandage into place. “Be careful when you take these off, and you might not rip all that hair out, ok?”

  “Ok,” Hazard said.

  “You seeing somebody?” she asked.

  Somers laughed, and it sounded on the edge of hysterics.

  “You ok?” Hazard asked.

  Shaking his head, Somers just kept laughing.

  “Yeah,” Hazard asked.

  “Too bad.” The paramedic stripped her gloves. Turning to Somers, she said, “You got an extra shirt for him?”

  Somers, still chuckling in bursts, shook his head. “What?”

  “A shirt.” The paramedic shooed him towards the uniformed officers, who were milling around now that the Volunteers were safely in the back of the patrol cars. “Go ask your buddies for a shirt he can wear.”

  “Right. A shirt.” Somers laughed again as he trotted away.

  “He’s a case, isn’t he?” the paramedic said.

  “He’s all right.”

  “Like I said, too bad. That you’re dating someone, I mean. You’re perfect for my brother. Big, muscle guy like you. Nice chest. Just the right amount of hair. Puppy dog eyes.”

  Hazard’s eyebrows climbed. “Who’s your brother?”

  “Don’t get worried; he’s my younger brother, and he’s kept himself together a lot better than I have.”

  “Who said you didn’t?”

  She snorted, but a pleased smile showed on her face. “Willoughby. Owns the Pretty Pretty.”

  “The what?”

  “Come on now,” she said, shaking a finger at him. “Everybody hears about the new gay cop, they expect certain things. You ought to at least have the decency to know the local gay bar.”

  Right then, Somers loped back towards them, carrying a blue t-shirt over one arm. “It’s the biggest they had,” he said.

  Hazard struggled into the shirt, ignoring the flashes of pain it sent off. The shirt was at least a size too small; it strained over his chest, and the sleeves looked ready to shred around his biceps. But it was better than going bare-chested.

  “You know about this?” Hazard asked. “Wahredua has a gay bar.”

  “What? Yeah, of course. The Pretty Pretty.” Somers seemed barely to notice the question. “Cravens is on her way over to talk to us.”

  “I’ll leave you boys,” the paramedic said with a grin. “You get lonely while you’re down here, look up Will. He’ll take good care of you.”

  Her grin morphed into a suggestive leer, and she sauntered off. As soon as she had turned to go, Somers resumed his pacing. “Look,” he said. “I don’t know what to say. I fucked up. I get it. And now you’re—I mean, Jesus Christ, an inch, that’s all it would have taken, and you’d be skewered.”

  “I’m not, though. I’m fine. It’s just a cut.”

  “It needs stitches.”

  “I’ve had stitches before. It’s fine. That guy with the knife, he wasn’t going to give you a scratch like this. He was going to do some serious damage.”

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Somers said, scrubbing at his hair as he paced. “I know. I shouldn’t have run ahead like that. I damn well shouldn’t have gotten so close. I just—” He cut off and spun towards Cravens as she approached.

  The police chief, to put it mildly, did not look happy. “You all right?” she asked Hazard.

  Hazard nodded.

  “You?”

  Somers pressed his thumb to his split lip and then against the darkening spot on his chin where the punch had landed. After a moment, he nodded too.

  “You want to drive yourselves to the hospital, or you want to ride in the ambulance?”

  “I don’t need a hospital,” Hazard said.

  “You need somebody to stitch you up. And before you open your mouth and argue with me, your partner needs to be checked for a concussion. Did you think about that?”

  Hazard shook his head. He hadn’t thought about that, and he risked a glance at Somers. How bad had that punch been? Surely Somers was all right, wasn’t he? But if he was, then why was he acting so funny?

  “I’ll drive us,” Hazard said.

  “All right,” Cravens said. “That’s settled. Now,” her voice took on steel. “Does one of you want to tell me what this shit show was all about? Somers, you can start. Do you want to tell me how many goddamn hours we’ve put, as a department, into training for crowd control? Exactly for situations like this mess. What happened to all the courses and practice? Where the hell was your head? And you, Detective Hazard, do you want to tell me to my face that St. Louis City Police never had a single training on crowd control?”

  “Chief,” Somers said, so white that Hazard was surprised he hadn’t toppled over, “I—”

  “He was covering for me.” Hazard didn’t really realize he had spoken the words until Somers and the chief both turned to stare at him.

  “What?” Cravens said.

  “No,” Somers said, shaking his head. “I—”

  “Everything was under control, and then I messed up. I got too close to one of the guys, and he lunged at me. Detective Somerset moved in to help me, and that’s when the guy drew the knife. We couldn’t get to our service weapons; things escalated too quickly.”

  Cravens watched Hazard for a long moment. Then her gaze shifted to Somers. “Well?”

  Somers looked miserable. “It’s not entirely how Detective Hazard’s telling it. No, don’t say anything, Hazard. I’m going to tell her. He’s being too hard on himself, Chief. We both approached the crowd because it still seemed like we could talk things out. I was as much a part of it as Detective Hazard. He’s right, though: things escalated more quickly than we anticipated.”

  “You walked right up to an angry mob without your service weapons drawn and without waiting for reinforcements?”

  Somers colored under his tan, but he nodded. “Like I said, Chief, things still seemed under control. I figured better a dialogue with the Volunteers than a shoot-out. How would that look in the paper? And on the campus, too.”

 
; For a moment, it seemed like Cravens wasn’t going to bite. Then Hazard put on his angriest face and said, “You want to tell her the truth? Fine, let’s tell her all of it: his sister-in-law is the Volunteer’s new Grand Wizard, or whatever you call it, and so Somers thought they’d be willing to talk to us. It was stupid, in hindsight. About as stupid as an idea gets.”

  This new information made Cravens pause, and in a dangerously calm voice she said, “Naomi is back?”

  “She never left,” Somers said. “Been here the whole three months.”

  “Working for the Volunteers?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “And you didn’t tell me—”

  “This dipshit,” Hazard broke in, “didn’t even know until yesterday. It’s in this morning’s report, Chief.”

  “This is a joke, right? My two best detectives, and one of them is stupid enough to just about get himself shish-kabobed, and the other’s stupid enough—or a big enough liar—not to know that his sister-in-law is running the biggest militia in the state. What the hell good are the two of you? I ought to put you on the street. I ought to have you watching crosswalks. Hell, I couldn’t even do that, could I, because you’ve got to have someone with an ounce of common sense because children use those crosswalks.” Cravens paused and heaved a breath. “Anything else, Detective Hazard, that I’m going to find in your report?”

  “We have a possible ID on our victim. Still trying to corroborate it. In the report, I ask for a dental record match on Charles Armistead.”

  “I know that name,” Cravens said. “Why do I know that name?”

  “He seems like he was pretty high placed in the Volunteers,” Somers said. “He was administering what he called their official Twitter feed, and he seems to have been involved, according to Naomi, with certain public occurrences involving the Volunteers.”