Pretty Pretty Boys

by Gregory Ashe

  “Dr. Fukuma, I should tell you—” Pope was vainly trying to say.

  “You lied to us, Dr. Fukuma,” Somers said, slouching into a chair at the interview table. The room was small, with gray carpet and gray walls, and Somers’s natural magnetism seemed amplified in that cramped space like he was on fire with life and energy. In this case, angry life and energy. “Obstruction of justice.”

  “That’s a felony,” Hazard put in, “if you’re concealing a felony crime.”

  “Dr. Fukuma,” Pope tried again.

  Fukuma ignored him. Her claws clutched at the table, and she coiled in her seat like she was ready to jump across the table and take out Somers’s eyes. “You’re all the same, cops. You’re all bullies, little men swinging little dicks, desperate to show that you’re not afraid of the enormous, existential vacuum of the vagina, desperate to pass off the lie that you don’t want to lie down, spread your legs, and be bred like dogs.”

  “Wow,” Somers muttered. “Powerful imagery.”

  “I’ve known men like you my whole life. I’m not going to be your victim. I’m not going to play the martyr. I’m not—”

  “We have you on the Pretty Pretty’s security camera. On Monday night, Dr. Fukuma. That’s the same night you told us you were in Manhattan, KS. The same night that a man was killed and left to burn in an abandoned trailer.”

  Fukuma fingers tightened so hard on the table’s edge that her knuckles cracked.

  “Unless you’re going to charge my client,” Pope said. “I think—”

  “You’re working for them. For those inbred hillbillies.” Fukuma seemed barely able to work her jaw; the words came out in broken chunks. “You think you’re better than them. You think you’re better than all of us. But you’re not, you’re just another tool in their machine. You’re a tool, and right here, sitting next to you, is your pet dog you keep on a leash to play fetch and roll over whenever you need him to.”

  Hazard didn’t respond. He could feel Somers’s eyes, he imagined he could feel Somers’s surprise, but he didn’t care. Was Fukuma right? Here Hazard was, sitting next to the man who had been part of the torture that had driven Jeff to kill himself. And what had Hazard done about it? Nothing. All those sleepless nights, all those times he had found himself standing at the edge of a precipice, staring into blackness, thinking about the time he would have a chance to come back—and here he was, not doing a fuck about any of it. So maybe Fukuma was right. Maybe Hazard was a sell-out, maybe he was nothing more than a toy, a necessary PC evil for the Warhedua department. His head dropped, and his big hands folded together. Tension knotted the line of his shoulders.

  “Can you tell us about September 15th?” Somers said.

  Fukuma froze.

  “I’m recommending, Dr. Fukuma, that we end this conversation right now.” Pope stretched out a hand and then hesitated, obviously unwilling to risk angering Fukuma by touching her. He settled for waving at the door. “Right now, as legal counsel—”

  “What is Miss—” Somers pretended to scan his notes. “Miss Hogan, what is she going to tell us about September 15th?”

  “That bitch,” Fukuma hissed, “knows better than to flap her mouth.”

  “All right, I think that’s enough.” Pope got to his feet. “Dr. Fukuma, if you won’t take my advice and end this conversation—and Detectives, if you’re not prepared to charge my client—”

  “Get out,” Fukuma said, not bothering to look at Pope. “Now. Go.”

  “Dr. Fukuma, I—”

  “Now.”

  Pope didn’t quite scurry on his way out of the room, but it was close. Hazard took another glance at their suspect. Fukuma seemed to coil in tighter on herself, compressing her tiny frame into the chair. It wasn’t a defensive movement, Hazard realized. It was the way big cats got ready for the kill.

  “Before you say anything else,” Somers said, “I’ll tell you that we’ve already spoken to several people who witnessed your altercation with Charles Armistead at the Pretty Pretty on the night of September 15th. They identified Armistead’s photograph and shared details of a consistent story. Miss Hogan will confirm those details—” That was a bit of a stretch, Hazard thought; they hadn’t even tracked down Natalie Hogan, let alone learned if she would corroborate the story from the Pretty Pretty. “And,” Somers continued, “we also have you lying about your whereabouts on Monday night. If you want things to go well, now’s the time to stop telling lies and start telling the truth.”

  Something in what Somers had said, something about the way he had said it, triggered a spark in Hazard’s mind. Fukuma was speaking again, shouting now, trying to shred Somers with her words, but Hazard barely heard her; he was too caught up in his own chain of thoughts. Yes, Fukuma had lied about her whereabouts on Monday. She had lied about the eyewitnesses, too, and her involvement with Armistead. What was the sequence of events? July 4, at a Volunteers’ march, Armistead and Fukuma get into a physical altercation. September 3—September, almost two months later—Chendo Cervantes gets into a fight with a bald man with a swastika tattoo. September 15, Fukuma pulls a gun on Armistead and threatens to kill him. And then nothing again until October 24, when Fukuma drives back early from her convention and, that same night, someone is killed. Maybe Charles Armistead. Probably Charles Armistead.

  But that wasn’t it. Frustration built inside Hazard. He was missing something. A part of him was still listening to Somers’s back and forth with Fukuma, but Hazard was still too deep in his thoughts to care. It was something about the alibi. Something that had stuck in Hazard’s mind and that was nagging at him. What had the woman at the convention said when Hazard called? They had been honored to have Dr. Fukuma. A leading scholar, a real revolutionary, a brilliant mind. Such a tragedy—

  Such a tragedy. But that woman hadn’t been talking about the assaults at the Pretty Pretty. She’d been talking about the Molotov cocktail thrown at Fukuma’s house. September 18. Three days after Fukuma’s encounter with Armistead at the Pretty Pretty. Someone had thrown a Molotov cocktail thrown at Fukuma’s house. It didn’t do hardly any damage. Fukuma had been lucky. And lucky in more ways than one; she had taken the opportunity, used the attention from the Molotov cocktail to bolster her platform, and that’s why the convention had noticed her, extended an invitation to speak—

  Hazard must have made a noise because Somers glanced over at him. Fukuma was still ranting. “Yes,” she was saying. “Yes, yes, yes. I pulled a gun on that mother-fucking bastard. Yes, I did it. I should have shot him right then. He’s the one that tried to kill me. He’s the one that threw a bomb at my house. A coward’s weapon used in a coward’s way. He would have killed me in my sleep—”

  “No,” Hazard said. He kept his voice soft and low. He’d found that his size made people expect him to boom something out, and when he defied those expectations, it seemed, somehow, to be even more effective. And it seemed to hold true again: Fukuma’s mouth clapped shut, and she stared at him.

  “No,” Hazard said again. “Charles Armistead didn’t throw a Molotov cocktail at your house. You did.”

  He saw the truth of it immediately in her startled eyes, in the way her gaze jerked guiltily away, in the sudden flex of her hands on the tabletop. Somers must have seen it too, but there was shock in his eyes as well. He faltered, his attention moving from Hazard to Fukuma.

  Hazard continued, “That’s another lie. And a very serious one.”

  “You don’t have any proof. There’s no—”

  “See, you talk the talk,” Hazard said, his deep, quiet voice cutting through Fukuma’s words. “That’s what tricked me. You’re very, very good at it. All those words. And the tone, the anger, the violence. You’re almost the real thing. But deep down, you’re not an activist. You don’t care about the cause. You care about power.” He felt his lips part in a hard, fierce smile. “You’re a politician. And like all politicians, for you, reality isn’t about the truth. It’s not about facts. It’s about appearance
s. That’s why you chased Charles Armistead with a gun. Not because you would have killed him—you’re not stupid enough for that. But because it fit your image. You had to show everyone at the Pretty Pretty that you were what you always claimed to be.

  “And then you got greedy. Wahredua was suffering a string of homophobic assaults and vandalism, and it was giving you more traction, more power, more political capital. Capital you could use to put pressure on the mayor, the police force, the college. But that wasn’t enough. You wanted to move it to the national stage. So you built a Molotov cocktail that you knew would be defective, and you threw it at your own house in the middle of the night. No witnesses. No one to say that it was anything but luck that saved your life. When people heard that story, you became—what do they call it? A cause célèbre. The castration convention, which didn’t have a place for you when you applied, suddenly found an opening. You were on your way to radical greatness.”

  Fukuma had gone ashen. She licked her lips, and her features showed an effort to regain her previous posture of white-hot rage at the world’s injustice. “Pathetic. That’s what this is. Another attempt by the male establishment to marginalize—”

  “No, we’re done with that. You’re right. We might not be able to prove that you were the one who threw that bomb. But it’ll be very easy to let the idea slip, and trust me, once the press gets wind of it, they’ll do plenty of digging. Even if all they can do is point out the sequence of events, it’ll be enough to paint you as a phony, someone willing to take advantage of a series of hate crimes for her own advantage. There’s no libel if the reader draws all the conclusions.”

  Fukuma teetered on her chair. Her hands still gripped the table, but now it seemed more to steady herself than as an expression of righteous fury. “What—” Her voice sounded dry and papery. “What do you want?”

  “Chendo Cervantes,” Somers said, his smooth voice back in control. “What can you tell us about him?”

  “What?”

  “Chendo Cervantes. His given name is Rosendo, but he goes by Chendo. He worked with you, a kind of volunteer activist.”

  “Yes, I know who he is.” Fukuma paused, her eyes flitting between the two of them. Hazard could practically see the wheels turning as she tried to figure out what she wanted to say. “Chendo is a very passionate young man.”

  “What does that mean?” Somers asked.

  “He’s full of fire at the world’s injustice. At the injustice done to members of the LGBT community, both by those outside and those inside.”

  “Those inside?”

  This time, there was no mistaking Fukuma’s gaze: she stared at Hazard, and he knew that’s what it would look like if she ever got close enough to put a knife in him. “People within the community who provoke self-hate. So-called straight-acting people, for example, who identify in a way that marginalizes members of the LGBT community and reinforces gender stereotypes.”

  “You’re talking about guys who are still in the closet?”

  “Or openly gay men and women who play ‘straight’ roles.”

  Hazard snorted, but when Somers looked at him, Hazard shook his head.

  “So Chendo had a real problem with those people?” Somers asked.

  Fukuma bared her teeth in a grimace. “We all should have a real problem with those people. They’re worse, in their own way, than straight people because they undermine efforts to improve gay rights.”

  “And where does Chendo Cervantes fit into this?”

  “Chendo liked finding men like this. Big, tough guys. Like your partner.” Fukuma’s eyes flashed in her pale face again, and a chill ran up Hazard’s spine. “He enjoyed teasing them, drawing out the desire they worked so hard to suppress, showing them that they would drool and beg like bitches once the bedroom door was shut.”

  Somers’s eyes showed cool calculation, and he gave Hazard a questioning glance. Hazard nodded.

  “Can you describe any of the men that Chendo was with?”

  Fukuma shook her head. “I never saw them together. He would just tell me about them.” A spasm of something like fear—or maybe, Hazard thought, genuine anger—closed her face for a moment, and then she spoke again. “If I tell you the rest, I expect that you’ll drop the matter of the attack on my house.”

  Somers shook his head. “You’re mistaken, Dr. Fukuma. We don’t make deals. You’d better go ahead and tell us everything you know. For your own sake, because you’re a good citizen.”

  With a short, sharp bark of laughter, Fukuma fanned her hands. “Two big men with the dyke over the barrel. All right.” She fumbled in her pockets and produced a cell phone. “Last weekend, Chendo started texting me. He wanted to tell me all about his latest conquest.” She turned the phone towards them, and on the screen was a picture showing a blue swastika tattoo—it looked like it was on an arm, but the picture was taken so close that it was hard to tell. The lighting in the picture was off, too, and the tattoo looked much darker than others Hazard had seen. Beneath the picture, Chendo had sent a text that said, The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Can’t wait to give you the details on this one—you won’t believe me. XOXO.

  “So Chendo had done this more than once,” Somers said, angling the photo so Hazard could see.

  “Oh yeah,” Fukuma said. “This was the game he liked the most. And it was more than a game. It was sexual political warfare.”

  “Christ,” Hazard said under his breath. “Just shoot me.”

  If Fukuma heard him, she didn’t acknowledge his words. “Chendo had been telling me about this one for weeks. His pet project. A ‘straight,’” she drew scare quotes in the air, “guy who was so hooked on Chendo that he was going to come out for him.”

  “He was a Volunteer?” Somers asked.

  “You saw the tattoo.”

  “Did he give you a name?”

  Fukuma shook her head.

  “Anything else we can go on?”

  “How about this?” Hazard said, glancing at a text message only partially visible on the phone’s screen. He snatched the phone and scrolled up. “‘He’s going to leave the bitch.’” Hazard looked at Fukuma. “The guy was married?”

  “I don’t know. Married, partnered, living in sin. Listen, that’s all I can tell you. If you want, I can give you the name of the girl I was with on Monday night, after I left the Pretty Pretty. I didn’t have anything to do with that fire or with the . . . with the murder.”

  Hazard ignored her. He thumbed down the screen on Fukuma’s phone until he reached the end of their messaging. His breath condensed inside his chest, vibrating with energy as he read the final text. After reading the message again, Hazard flipped the phone towards Somers, who grunted. You were right, the text said. There are no peaceful ends to power. I’ll make you proud tonight. It had been sent on Monday, October 24, at 10:59pm.

  SOMERS ARRIVED AT NEWTON MORTUARY with a hangover hammering on the back of his head. He had downed a full cup of coffee already, and he was eying the cup he had bought for Hazard. If his partner didn’t get there soon, he was going to miss out.

  The interview with Fukuma had wrapped up without any further revelations, and the professor had gone home looking drained and defeated. It was hard for Somers to feel sorry for her; beyond her hostility, the woman had lied to them and had manipulated a horrible situation to her own advantage.

  But she had, Somers admitted, given them information that changed the case. It had been one thing to assume, based on Nico Flores’s statements, that Chendo had picked up a violent, sexually repressed man and had gotten into a fatal conflict with him. It was another thing entirely to know that Chendo had made a habit of picking up straight-acting guys, humiliating them, and—to judge from the final text—in the last case, killing one as a form of revenge and some twisted sense of justice.

  The sun pounded through the Impala, heating the car to an intolerable temperature even at this early hour. Still no sign of Hazard. Somers kicked open his door, breathed in a fre
sh wave of hot asphalt, and grabbed the second cup of coffee. By the time he had reached the mortuary’s doors, sweat prickled on his forehead, and he thought he could smell the cheap booze leaking out of him.

  After the interview, Hazard had gone home with hardly a word spoken. He was still angry, Somers assumed, about how Somers had handled the interviews at the Pretty Pretty. And that fact made Somers angry in turn. What right did Hazard have to be so prickly about everything? Somers had done a good job with the interviews. He had gotten key information about Fukuma—information that had led them towards Chendo Cervantes and the possibility of closing what had quickly become the strangest case in Somers’s career. But it didn’t matter—the minute Hazard had walked into the club, he had been angry with Somers. Almost as if he had been—

  —jealous—

  —looking for a fight. Somers couldn’t really blame last night’s drinking on Hazard—he wasn’t going to lie to himself—but the strange tension with his partner certainly had added an extra edge to take off. Somers sucked in a deep breath and shook off the lingering irritation from last night; today was a fresh day. A fresh start for everybody. Somers took a long sip from the second cup. Fresh start or no fresh start, Hazard still wasn’t here, and that meant he wasn’t getting any coffee.

  After another fifteen minutes with nothing but the whine of an ill-used lawnmower for company, Somers stepped into the mortuary and made his way towards the ME’s office at the back. He punched in the code and stepped into Dr. Kamp’s private world. Little had changed since Somers’s last visit. The steel drawers showed grubby smears of handprints; the octagonal black-and-white tiles were more gray and grime than white; the turquoise-enameled autopsy table slumped wearily against one wall. The only difference was that Dr. Kamp was gone—either home or, more likely, on one of his semi-sober runs to restock his supply of hootch. Somers let out a sigh; he had been hoping to catch the doctor in between his thunderstorms of drinking, but it looked like he wasn’t going to be that lucky.