Pretty Pretty Boys

by Gregory Ashe

  Hazard’s brow furrowed. “That seems like a stretch. How big is the gay community here? Isn’t it possible he just got hit a second time on accident?”

  “Possible? Sure.”

  “So why dig into him?”

  “What’s going on?”

  Hazard’s eyes flicked away, and red colored his cheeks. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, you’re going to have dinner with this guy’s boyfriend because he disappeared and he might have done something stupid, and then the same guy’s name shows up twice on our list and you act like it’s just a coincidence? I expected you to jump all over that. So what’s going on?”

  “Fine,” Hazard said, grabbing a folder and slapping it open on the desk in front of him. “I’ll check.”

  “Fine.” Somers slouched in his chair, bending back the cover of the file on Fukuma.

  “And don’t say it like that,” Hazard snapped without looking up.

  “What?”

  “Going to have dinner.”

  “Are you going somewhere?”

  Hazard was silent for so long that Somers thought he wouldn’t answer. Then, finally, he grunted, “Yes.”

  “Are you going to eat dinner wherever you end up going?”

  “Fuck you.”

  With a laugh, Somers turned his attention back to the file. As with most of the cases that fell under the provisional hate crime label, there was relatively little information, although Fukuma’s case did stand out as one of the most violent and dangerous of the incidents. An unknown suspect had thrown a homemade Molotov cocktail at Fukuma’s house. In this case, the perpetrator had used a bottle of vodka with a rag stuffed in the neck, but the weapon hadn’t worked well. When it exploded against the wall of Fukuma’s house, most of the alcohol was dispersed without igniting, and only a small patch of the porch was singed. Fukuma and neighbors had been interviewed, but the incident had happened in the early hours of the morning, and there had been no eyewitnesses. There had been no further leads.

  Somers leaned back, thinking about what he had read and about what Fukuma had told him. Fukuma had expressed her belief that the Volunteers had wanted to kill her for a long time. Somers, personally, didn’t blame them—he had spent less than half an hour with Fukuma, and even he had wanted to kill her. The Molotov cocktail, even though poorly made, could have been deadly—if it had broken a window and set a fire inside the house, for example, especially while Fukuma was sleeping.

  What interested Somers were two things: first, that no follow-up attempts had been made on Fukuma’s life, and second, that the weapon had been so ineffective. It wasn’t that difficult to build a decent Molotov cocktail. For that matter, it wasn’t that difficult to build a decent pipe bomb or other homemade explosives—a car bomb, for example. Among the Volunteers—many of whom had either a criminal background or criminal connections—it wouldn’t be difficult to find someone who could make a weapon that would kill Fukuma.

  So, if they had really wanted her dead, why hadn’t they? Had there been some other reason for the failed attack? Had it been intended to frighten, maybe even to terrorize, but not to kill? Somers scanned the list of dates that he and Hazard had compiled. The attack on Fukuma’s house had come on September 18. That wasn’t that long ago. Naomi claimed that Fukuma and Armistead had come into conflict, potentially more than once. Fukuma, on the other hand, claimed that she didn’t know who Armistead was.

  Somers guessed that Fukuma had been telling the truth when they asked her if she’d ever heard of Charles Armistead. Her answer had been clear and quick. But when Somers had shown her the picture, everything had changed. Fukuma had definitely recognized Armistead. And, more importantly, she had lied about recognizing him. Why?

  Was Armistead the man who, at the Volunteers’ march in July, had gotten into a fight with Fukuma? That seemed possible. Even probable, considering Fukuma’s reaction to the photo and Naomi’s claims. But why had there been such a lapse between the confrontation at the march and what Somers was beginning to believe was Armistead’s attempt at retaliation? Had something else happened? Something that had pushed Armistead to such an act? Or had Armistead simply been waiting? And neither situation explained why, when the attack failed, Armistead hadn’t tried again.

  Somers realized that Hazard was on the phone, and he heard Hazard’s gravelly voice asking about Fukuma. Stretching to ease the kinks after so much sitting, Somers dropped the folder on the desk and listened.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Hazard was saying. “Yes. Yes. Yes, ma’am. A terrible—” He had the look of a man trapped with an elderly aunt—a very elderly aunt—who only wanted to talk about her pet Yorkie but who might, if he listened long enough, hand over twenty bucks for a night at the movies. “Yes, as you say, it’s—wait, what was that?” Everything about Hazard changed; it was like the air before a lightning strike, all the energy rising in a current. “If you could just go over that one more time. Yes, yes, yes. Thank you, ma’am, I have to go.”

  When Hazard disconnected the call, he wasn’t smiling, but he had a kind of grim satisfaction radiating off him. “Convention organizer, for Fukuma’s alibi.”

  “What’d you find out?”

  “You first.”

  So Somers laid out what he had seen in the case: his surmise that Fukuma had lied about knowing Armistead, the likely date of their conflict at the march in July, and the strangeness about the attack on her home. When he’d finished, he said, “There’s a lot to fill in, but there’s definitely reason to see the events as connected. What about you? Rosendo Cervantes, what’s the deal?”

  “You’re right.”

  “What?”

  “You were right. About them being connected, I mean. The first file, Cervantes got into a fight with someone at the Pretty Pretty. On the 911 call, he claimed he was being threatened and that his life was in danger. When officers showed up, Cervantes gave them the description of a tall, powerfully built bald man with a swastika tattoo. They asked around, but Cervantes said this had happened in a back alley. No cameras. No witnesses. When they asked him what he’d been doing back there, Cervantes told them the guy had approached him, asked for a blowjob, and Cervantes had said yes. The guy took him out back, threatened him, and then just ran off. In the interview, Cervantes said he’d made a huge mistake about sex with strangers, all that stuff, but otherwise stuck to his story. The officers canvassed the area, but nothing. And that’s where they left it.”

  “Ok,” Somers said, nodding. “I remember that one now. We tried contacting Cervantes, he wouldn’t return phone calls, wouldn’t come to the door. Upchurch and I finally decided to shelve it; we had hotter stuff rolling in, and we had to keep going. When was this one?”

  “I don’t know. September, I think. Anyway, listen: I got something from Fukuma’s convention. The ethical castration shit. The lady I talked to told me what an honor it was to have Fukuma, how important she was, they were so glad they were able to work her into the schedule after that earlier misunderstanding, the tragedy of the hate crime bombing—I guess somehow they heard about that—and then, here’s the best part: how sad it was that Fukuma couldn’t stay for the closing banquet, what a loss to everyone after her excellent speech, blah, blah, blah.” Hazard sat back, practically glowing again with self-satisfaction. “She left Manhattan at 4:30pm. Right after her talk, that’s what the lady told me.”

  “Lot of places she could go,” Somers said. “The hotel, for example. Maybe she was just sick of all the people, needed a break. Maybe she had a migraine.”

  “Maybe she drove back to Wahredua. What is it to Manhattan? Four hours?”

  “Close to that. But we don’t know she came back to Warhedua. No proof of it, anyway.”

  “No proof. Not yet. But from what you saw in the case file and from what I heard on the phone, you’ve got to admit: motive and opportunity.”

  Somers grunted and, after a moment, nodded. “Yeah.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing, I�
��m just playing devil’s advocate. I like it. I think it works.”

  Hazard glanced at his watch. “Next step is?”

  “You’re going to dinner. Don’t make that face, I’m serious. If this Cervantes guy really did get threatened by Armistead, maybe he told the boyfriend some details. You ask him about it. See if he can tell us anything else about what’s been going on. If Fukuma is telling the truth and there are people in the gay community who won’t talk to the police, maybe Nico will pass some of that information to you.”

  “Because I’m gay.”

  Somers shrugged. “And because he wants in those very tight pants you wear. Meanwhile, I’ll check out the Pretty Pretty.”

  A shark grin curved Hazard’s mouth. “You?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  “You’re going to a gay club? Alone?”

  “I’m going for work, Hazard, not for play.”

  “Those boys are going to eat you alive.”

  “I’m a grown man. I think I can handle myself.”

  By now, Hazard was grinning so hard his cheeks looked ready to split. “All right.”

  “What? What is it?”

  “Nothing. I can’t wait to hear how it goes.”

  HAZARD NEEDED TO GO HOME and change before dinner, but he had one stop to make first. He said goodnight to Somers—the blond detective, with his perfect swimmer’s looks and his rumpled dress shirt and his tie hanging loose, was a kind of genetic gaybait that Hazard wished he could see set loose in the Pretty Pretty—and drove a handful of blocks to the Casey’s where Mikey Grames worked. Then he sat in the parking lot, counting cars, watching the ebb and flow—but mostly the ebb, as cars pulled away from the station. It was rush hour, or what passed for it in Wahredua, and that didn’t give Hazard much of an opening, but the Casey’s was never very busy and rush hour was no exception.

  When he saw his chance, he took it. The last car in front of the convenience store pulled away, and Hazard sprang out of his seat and loped up to the door. He slipped inside and turned the deadbolt and the closed sign behind him. He guessed that he had five minutes before someone came knocking.

  Mikey Grames didn’t look any better than when Hazard had last seen him. If anything, he looked worse. Grames had always been big: big arms, big legs, a big middle that had made him the object of teasing until Mikey had learned it was better to be feared than humiliated. He was still tall, but a lot of the excess weight had vanished—meth, Hazard guessed, which explained the rotting brown stumps in Mikey’s mouth. His lank, straw-colored hair fell to his shoulders; the dandruff looked thick enough to have its own seismic activity. Everything about the man spoke of hard living, drugs, and the slow disintegration of a human being.

  This, Hazard reminded himself, was the bastard who had tried carving his initials into Hazard’s chest. This was the bastard, along with Hugo and John-Henry, who had tortured Hazard for most of his adolescence. And today, Hazard was going to find out what this bastard had done to Jeff Langham.

  Mikey, for his part, still seemed not to have noticed Hazard, so Hazard took an extra moment to scan the cameras. Then, with a firm stride, he crossed behind the counter, grabbed Mikey by the collar, and dragged him towards the rack of brown-paper-covered skin rags at the back of the store.

  Mikey took a full fifteen seconds to react. Then he struggled, one of his wiry hands biting into Hazard’s wrist, the other one coming around in a fist. Hazard was already moving, but he hadn’t expected Mikey to take the offensive, and the punch landed just below the ribs. With a grunt, Hazard felt his breath explode from his lungs.

  Taking two more steps, Hazard spun around and launched him into the porno rack. Paper-covered magazines flew into the air, and the metal frame rattled and crashed. Mikey took another swing, but this time Hazard was ready. Instead of connecting with Hazard, the punch went wide. Hazard followed Mikey’s miss by slapping Mikey on the side of the head. Mikey stumbled, swung again—even more wildly this time—and Hazard landed a second slap. He knew it had to be ringing Mikey’s bell pretty bad, but Mikey still didn’t go down.

  Then it happened, what Hazard had been waiting for: Mikey went for his knife. Hazard wasn’t stupid enough to get involved in a knife fight, especially when he was the one without a knife—the odds were high that it would end badly. But he had counted on Mikey acting exactly like what he was—a scumbag ex-con carrying some sort of weapon.

  As soon as Mikey’s hand dipped towards his pocket, Hazard pinned him against the porno rack. Mikey struggled one last time, bringing his knee up towards Hazard’s crotch, but Hazard blocked the blow and cracked Mikey’s head against the vinyl paneling on the back wall.

  “What do you have here?” Hazard asked, wrenching Mikey’s hand up to display the knife. He squeezed and twisted, and with a gasp, big old Mikey Grames, who had made Hazard’s life thirty-one flavors of hell, dropped the blade. “That’s second-degree assault. Maybe first, depending on the story I tell. And trust me, Mikey, I can tell a really good story when I want to.” Hazard paused. He felt hollow again, that kind of icy, arctic landscape emptiness that he had felt since coming back to Wahredua, as though a whole universe could blow through him and leave him just as empty as before. With another quick movement, he cracked Mikey’s head against the wall again. “Who am I?”

  Mikey Grames mumbled something; his knees went limp, and his big frame slumped forward.

  Hazard cracked his head against the wall again. “Who am I?”

  This time, Mikey mumbled a name.

  “Say it louder.”

  “Hazard. Emery Hazard.” Mikey’s eyes finally came up, still cloudy with whatever shit he was on, and cloudy too with pain and anger and the blows to the head. In spite of those clouds, though, the hate and contempt were unmistakable. That was the look Hazard was accustomed to seeing in Mikey’s eyes.

  “You know how this is going to work?” Hazard asked.

  “You can’t do this,” Mikey said sullenly. “You don’t have the right. I’m working an honest job. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t—”

  “Be quiet, you stupid piece of shit. Be quiet and listen to me very carefully. Here’s how this is going to happen. You’re going to answer my questions. And then I’ll let you go back to whatever the hell you’re doing. If you try to hold something back, if you try to lie, I’ll know. And then I’ll drag you straight to the station. Your ass won’t have time to touch a chair before they’re shipping you back to prison.”

  “You got no right. You got no—” Mikey’s words cut off as Hazard closed one paw around his neck; the ex-con’s protests thinned out into a strangled shriek.

  “First question: what did you do to Jeff Langham?”

  When Hazard released the meth-head, he said, “What? Who?”

  “Langham. Jeff Langham. Back in high school. The only kid our year who killed himself. The only one who died the whole time we were in high school.” Hazard could hear his voice getting louder, his hands tightening on Mikey, but he couldn’t seem to pull back. “What did you do to him?”

  “Nothing. I swear to God, nothing. It was a suicide. They all said it. Everybody said it. The twink put a gun between his teeth and knocked out the back of his head, that’s what everyone said, that’s what everyone still says.”

  “I’m going to ask you one more time,” Hazard said; he had managed to crank his voice down to a normal level, but his knuckles were still white where he gripped Mikey. He knew he was hurting the man. He didn’t care. “If you tell me nothing, we’re going for a drive.”

  Mikey’s drug-hazed eyes widened; the anger and contempt were still there, but now Hazard could see fear as well. When Mikey spoke again, his words were whispered and frantic, and they reeked with the stench of his rotting teeth.

  “Oh Jesus, oh Jesus, oh Jesus. We didn’t mean for anything like that to happen. We were just—it was just boys, you know? Just boys being boys. And I was on something, that’s it, I was high, and those other boys, they were in it too, they were
there.”

  “Hugo?”

  “Hugo Perry didn’t have the guts to piss on an ant, but he was there because he wanted what we had. Me and your buddy. Your new partner.”

  “Keep talking.”

  Mikey’s eyes drifted down Hazard. A cruel smile shaped itself around the brown stumps of teeth. “You still got my mark, don’t you? You’re still mine. I own your faggot ass, still, don’t I?”

  “You have got to be,” Hazard said, grabbing Mikey by the jaw and ramming his head against the wall again. “The stupidest son-of-a-bitch Wahredua ever produced.” Again, Mikey tried to fall, and again Hazard pinned him against the rack full of last month’s Hustler and Penthouse. “Somers was there.”

  “He stayed when we cut you, remember that?” Hazard raised a fist, and Mikey cowered, raising both hands and saying, “It’s important. I’m telling you this because you gotta know.” Hazard hesitated and then dropped his fist, and after a moment Mikey continued. “He stayed. You remember Hugo was a little bitch. Just a little blood, I told him. It ain’t hurtin’ him none. Just a little blood and just a little reminder about the way things work in this town. But Hugo’s balls must have dropped off because as soon as I started cutting, he pissed himself and took off running. Remember?”

  “A little differently,” Hazard said. “But more or less.”

  In truth, though, it was more than a little different. It hadn’t been a little cut, a little blood. It had been deep, painful sawing with a dull Swiss Army knife blade. It had been a lot of blood, enough blood that it had soaked the waistband of Hazard’s jeans and stained his Jockey’s rust-colored. And Hugo hadn’t run right away. He had stayed long enough for Mikey to make three cuts.

  “Well, that was the end of that game, wasn’t it? I mean, it wasn’t any fun, not after that.”

  “You mean the two of you couldn’t hold me.”

  “Oh, we could have done it. It would have gotten all messy, though, and I didn’t want a mess. I was just after a little fun.”