Redirection

by Gregory Ashe

  “What did Peter and Paul say?”

  “They were vague on the details.”

  Rufus shrugged.

  “Why would Rik do that to you? You were, hell, twenty?”

  “I did something he didn’t like.”

  “What?”

  Rufus shrugged again and said, “If I tell you that, I’ll have to tell you something else, and that’s not my thing to do.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “It means I’m not saying anything else. You want to know if I killed Rik? I didn’t. I was with Nicky all night. I left the party—yeah, I fought with Rik, and no, I’m not going to talk about it—and I went straight home. Nicky was waiting for me there, and I didn’t go out again. Ask him yourself.” He inclined his head toward the boy with the midnight eyes, who was lurking on the periphery, sulking and obviously hoping Rufus would notice, have his heart broken, and beg for forgiveness.

  “Before I go, I want to show you something.” North produced his phone. He displayed the email with its subject line Blast from the past? and played the video.

  When it finished, Rufus rubbed a spot between his eyes. “God damn it, Percy. What the fuck are you up to?”

  “What do you mean, Percy?”

  Rufus shook his head and started to rise again.

  North was out of his seat faster. He shoved Rufus back into the chair and stood over him. “I can’t get Percy on the phone. I can’t get him at work. I can’t get him at home. He’s done some seriously sketchy shit over the last couple weeks, and now, when I show you that video, you say his name and act like the whole thing makes sense. So I’m going to ask you again: what do you mean, Percy?”

  The hub of voices and the EDM’s throbbing beat filled the silence between them. A few of the guys closest to the cluster of seating must have noticed the exchange because they were watching now. Rufus glanced around, and then he finger-combed his bushy beard.

  “Look,” he said, “it’s not my place to—”

  “Fuck that. If Percy were being an adult and answering his goddamn phone, then yeah, maybe this would be a different conversation. But he’s not, and it’s not, so start talking.”

  Rufus was still for a moment, a kind of motionlessness that suggested the possibility of sudden, explosive movement. Then he sagged back into the seat and sighed. North only knew because of the shape of his mouth; the sound was swallowed up by the club’s noise. “He had pictures.”

  “Who?”

  “Rik. He had pictures of Percy. Has, I guess. He took them back in college. You know they fucked around, and I guess Rik got Percy drunk and they did some kinky shit together. Sober, Percy’s got about as much kink in him as dry toast, so I guess he tried to call things off. Rik wouldn’t let him. He had the pictures.”

  “He was blackmailing him?”

  Nodding, Rufus said, “Percy’s a little bitch ninety percent of the time, but the other ten percent, he’s all right. One night we were at Rivets having a drink. A guy tried to pick him up; he was Percy’s type, preppy and all prettied up, but Percy blew him off. I asked him why. Percy fell apart. Came completely unglued. I had to get him home. He was drunk, sure, but he was also hysterical. I finally got the whole thing out of him.”

  “Shit. I don’t get it, though. I mean, yeah, Percy’s a nice-looking guy. And he definitely fits the bill for a lot of men. But Rik was getting all the ass he wanted back then. Why stoop to blackmail?”

  “Percy told me what Rik did to him. Some of it anyway. There aren’t a lot of guys who will let you do that to them.” Rufus rolled his shoulders. “And the guys who want to do it? A lot of them get off on it, more I mean, if the other person doesn’t want it.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Ask Percy. I’m serious; I’m not telling you, so don’t push me.”

  North waved that away. “What happened?”

  “I waited after class one day. I had Business 100 with Rik. It was in one of those big lecture halls. When it was empty, I walked down to the bottom where he was packing up. He asked me something—he’d made a pass at me once, and I’d blown him off hard, so he wasn’t acting very nice. I grabbed one of the erasers and knocked him around with it.”

  A shocked laugh escaped North.

  “It was kind of funny, I guess.” A rueful grin parted the beard for a moment. “It was more about humiliating him, scaring him, that kind of thing. I’m sure it didn’t feel good, getting slapped with those erasers, and he had chalk dust all over him, but I didn’t leave any marks. We were in this big building full of kids, middle of the day, and he’d got his shit handed to him with an eraser. The way he looked at me, he wanted to kill me. Would have killed me, I think, if he thought he could get away with it. I told him to destroy the pictures and leave Percy alone. I said he could try to ruin Percy’s life if he wanted, but Percy was young, and even nasty shit like that eventually gets flushed. Him, on the other hand, I told him if anybody ever saw those pictures, I’d be waiting for him one night with a tire iron, and when I was done, nobody would find what was left of him.”

  “Holy shit. Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you tell the rest of us?”

  “Uh huh. Golden-boy Percy was going to have everybody over to that Lafayette Square loft and tell you about how he’d been blackmailed into some seriously scary sex?”

  “All right, point taken.”

  “Rik faked the cheating. The proof of it, I mean. That was his payback, petty as fuck. I probably should have kneecapped him, just on principle, but I was so happy to be out of that fucking school that I let it slide. I didn’t have anything to do with him after that. I checked in on Percy a couple of times, but Rik left him alone, and then he was back with his wife, and it was over.”

  “Until he came back.”

  “That’s why I was at the Fairy Fourth of July or whatever it was. Percy texted me. I went over to remind Rik of our agreement. He wasn’t happy, but hell, I look a fuck-ton meaner than I used to, and I think I scared the shit out of him.”

  North turned it all over in his head. “I didn’t think you and Percy stayed in touch.”

  “We don’t. But he was my friend, or close enough, at a place where I never fit in. And we went through some shit together. So if I don’t hear from him until he calls me twenty years from now, I’ll pick up the phone and ask him what he needs. And I think he’d do the same, even if he is a princess most of the time.”

  “Rufus, I need to talk to Percy.”

  Rufus grunted and looked away.

  “This is serious. If he was trying to blackmail Rik the way Rik blackmailed him all those years ago, it could tell us what happened the night Rik was killed.”

  “You think Percy did him?”

  “I think I need to talk to Percy. And wherever he’s hiding, he’s not going to come out for me. I’ve already tried.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Tucker’s case—”

  “I said I’ll see, North.” Rufus’s gaze shifted to a spot behind North. “You’d better go get your boy before he ends up in a collar and riding bitch. Dakota doesn’t look like much, but he’s a mean little fuck. Besides, I’ve got to smooth things out on the home front. If I still can.”

  North glanced over his shoulder. Shaw was still at the jukebox, but now he had his back pressed to the machine. A short guy built like a wrestler, with a spiky blond faux hawk, was keeping him pinned there—not touching, but his body invading Shaw’s space, keeping him from slipping away. That had to be Dakota. He wore a leather harness, leather trunks, and leather engineer boots. He looked like he clocked a lot of time at the gym.

  Forcing a path through the crowd, North’s vision tunneled. The music pounded at him. It got mixed up inside his head. It was a second pulse. Dakota had a hand on Shaw now, twisting the fabric of Shaw’s tank, then releasing the cotton and smoothing it over Shaw’s clavicle. The sweat and heat were a second skin for North. He�
�d never thought his heart could pound this fast. Some people’s hearts gave out, he thought. They started beating so fast that they seized up and stopped. That made a lot of sense, he was suddenly starting to think.

  Dakota pinched Shaw’s nipple through the fabric, the gesture savagely controlling, and when Shaw bent and twisted, Dakota gripped his throat with his other hand and forced him upright. Shaw broke the hold, knocked Dakota’s hand away, and slid along the curved glass of the jukebox. Shaw was saying something. The words went in and out like someone was spinning the dials in North’s head.

  “—and did I like it, sure, and am I interested in your technique, absolutely, and am I sorry if I hurt your wrist, yes, but you really shouldn’t have grabbed me like that, not without asking, and—” Shaw must have seen him then because his face blanked out and he shouted, “North, no! It’s fine. It was a misunderstanding.”

  Dakota turned in response to Shaw’s words, and Shaw seized the opening to elbow past him, putting himself between North and the leather boy.

  “Get out of the way,” North said.

  “No, it was a miscommunication. I said something about nipples, and then he said something about nipples. I said something about his harness. He said something about my shirt. He was trying to show me something, but I guess I didn’t expect him to touch me—no.” He shoved North back when North tried to take a step. “No way. We’re leaving.”

  “In a minute.”

  “North, no!”

  “This piece of shit’s trying to drop dick on you. I’m going to take care of that. Then we can go.”

  “What’s wrong, motherfucker?” Dakota was shouting behind Shaw. “A big, dumb fucker like you needs to keep better tabs on his property.”

  “I’m not technically his property,” Shaw said over his shoulder, still leaning into North and trying to force him back. “People can’t be property, although in a Kantian sense—oh shit.” He caught North’s shirt at the last moment, squirmed, and managed to get his shoulder into North’s solar plexus. It had the simultaneous effect of stalling North’s charge at Dakota and knocking the wind out of him.

  He was still catching his breath when Shaw manhandled him outside, into the night smelling of gravel dust and motor oil and something hot and sparking like bare wires that was probably meth.

  “Get off me,” North growled, pushing Shaw away to suck in more air.

  But the door to the club swung open, and Dakota swaggered out. He was pretty, North decided. All that compact muscle. The sheen of sweat. Those damn calves.

  “We were having a conversation,” Dakota said. “Fuck off so we can finish.”

  “I think we’re done,” Shaw said.

  “Bitch, when I want you to talk, I’ll tell you. Go wait by my bike.”

  “Ok, but a few notes. First, bitch is a very offensive word. Second, I don’t know which one is your bike. Third—oh no.”

  That was approximately the same time North broke Dakota’s nose.

  The pretty leather boy fell flat on his ass. A couple of guys whispered off in the darkness. The slight stirring of air felt wonderful on the back of North’s neck.

  “North!”

  Shaking out his hand, North glared at Shaw, who was staring from Dakota to North and back to Dakota.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Why did I do that? Are you fucking serious right now?”

  “He wasn’t doing anything. I was going to teach him about how to be respectful of other men’s bodies, and then we were going to talk about nipple clamps, and I liked his harness. That was a teachable moment for both of us.”

  “You know what, Shaw?” A wave of nausea swept over North, and the little aftershocks of adrenaline were already starting. “Fuck you. And fuck this night. And most definitely fuck Dakota. Let’s go.”

  But Shaw didn’t move.

  Something seemed to break inside North, and whatever crested and washed through him, it was ugly and dark and deep. “Are you going home with him instead?”

  “No. Obviously.”

  “Are you going to suck his dick before we take off?”

  Shaw glared at him. “You’re being a jerk tonight.”

  “Go ahead. Don’t let me get in the way of your parking-lot knob job.”

  Crickets. The river of traffic. The distant streetlights throwing rings into the humidity like lens flares.

  Shaw stepped around North toward the thick shadows at the curb. “I’ll take an Uber.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  “I don’t want to be around you right now.”

  Catching Shaw’s arm, North started toward the GTO. “That’s too fucking bad, then, isn’t it?”

  Shaw didn’t fight him, didn’t dig in his heels, didn’t try to pry off his hands. It left North dissatisfied. Something was gearing up inside him, something ferocious, and Shaw wasn’t giving back what North wanted. He glanced back at Dakota, bloody and stunned on the gravel, and whatever it was geared up higher.

  When they got to the car, North released Shaw, and Shaw immediately took a step toward the curb again.

  This time, the flat of North’s hand connected with Shaw’s chest. The crack of the blow rang out in the quiet. The force of it sent Shaw stumbling back until his hip bumped the GTO’s trunk. His hazel eyes were wide with shock.

  “You want to say something?”

  Shaw had bit his lip. A trickle of blood ran down his chin.

  “Go on,” North said. “Say something.”

  In a painfully calm voice, Shaw said, “You have to unlock the door.” Then he wiped the blood from his chin and waited.

  The excuses started coming in the void between streetlights, when it seemed like they were shuttling under the husks of burned-out stars.

  “I saw him hurting you, and I got protective. Sue me for feeling protective.”

  The thrum of tires.

  “And it wasn’t safe for you to take an Uber. Not with Ronnie out there planning God knows what.”

  The AC struggled to churn the thick, hot air. The smell of leather and something like acetone clung to both of them, the ghost that had followed them from the Backhoe.

  “You can be as mad as you want once I’ve checked your place. You can tell me to fuck off once I know you’re all right.”

  “Stop talking,” Shaw said in that horrible, awful calm, and then he pulled his legs up and rested his head against the glass, and they dropped into the void between lights again.

  Chapter 22

  SHAW’S CHEST STILL STUNG. The print of the hand was an invisible heat on his chest; he could have traced it blindfolded. But at least—thank God—at least North had stopped talking. And for a while, there was only the throatiness of the GTO, and the gaps between that should have been silence.

  North parked in front of Shaw’s parents’ place. The engine ticked as it cooled. He released the wheel, and for one horrible moment, Shaw thought he was going to reach out and touch Shaw again. Shaw fumbled with the door’s handle and got out, the humid night gluing itself to his skin. Behind him, audible in the quiet of the street, North sighed.

  At the front door, North caught up to him, and he followed Shaw inside. All the lights were on. Music was playing upstairs—Snow Patrol. Sad, pretty boys singing about sad, pretty things. Music that North must have loved in high school because he had played it—ironically, of course—in college. And now it was here, and Tucker was playing it, and everything from that night and all the nights over the last few months, the nights alone, the nights after the breakup, the nights after Shaw’s home had burned down and his life had burned down and he’d found himself alone when he’d never been alone, not really, since his freshman year of college—all of it caught up to him, and he had to blink and look at the floor and try to do box breathing the way Dr. Farr made him practice sometimes.

  “Please tell me you guys are hungry,” Tucker was saying as he appeared on the second-floor landing. “I know it
’s late, but I’ve got this weird craving for—”

  “Shut the fuck up,” North said. He raised a hand, as though he might touch Shaw’s arm, and then he dropped it again. “Stay here, ok?”

  Shaw didn’t answer, but that must have been a kind of response because North moved off on his usual circuit: doors and windows and rooms, checking, checking, checking.

  Tucker’s steps were whispery on the stairs.

  “Hey, what happened?” His voice came closer. Shaw fixed his swimmy vision on the floorboards. “Something feels seriously messed up. Are you all right?”

  Shaw tried to shake his head; a broken “No” slipped out, and then he was crying.

  “Oh. Hell.”

  For some reason, that made Shaw cry harder. After a moment, Tucker put his arms awkwardly around Shaw, and Shaw started to sob. Tucker pulled him into an embrace, and Shaw pressed his face into Tucker’s polo and smelled detergent and nice soap and a warm body.

  “Hey, it’s ok, you’re ok. What—”

  “What the fuck are you doing?” North’s voice had all the controlled brittleness of ice. “Get away from him.”

  “He started crying—”

  “I don’t care. Get away from him.” Tucker didn’t move, and North snapped, “Stop touching him.”

  “Jesus, Mick, he’s—”

  “Stop calling me that! What the fuck is wrong with you? I hated that stupid nickname in college. I hated it the whole time we were together. And no matter how many times I told you I hated it, you still kept calling me that stupid fucking nickname. What the fuck don’t you understand about ‘I don’t like it?’”

  In the silence that followed, Tucker’s breathing sounded uneven, but his arms tightened around Shaw. “Whatever happened tonight—”

  “Get. Your. Fucking. Hands. Off. Him. There, is that clear enough?”

  “Will you stop it?” Shaw wiped his face and stepped away to face North. “Will you stop this fucking macho bullshit for one fucking second?”

  The silence had a cracked-glass quality to it. Snow Patrol was still playing in the distance.

  “Maybe we should all—” Tucker began.