by Andrea Speed
He checked his phone to find Sam had texted him. He felt they had gotten off on the wrong foot and wanted to talk about it. What an asshole. The problem was, Chai was starting to feel so lonely, he almost considered it for a second.
There were a lot of guys who wanted nothing to do with him because of his skin color. Then, if he could get past that hurdle, there were guys who wanted nothing to do with him because he was an amputee. If there was anyone left after that vetting process, he then had to weed out the fetishists who got off on amputees. His dating prospects, which had been poor before, were apocalyptically dismal now. Of course, Chai sometimes still had a problem seeing himself naked, due to his missing lower leg, and that just added intimacy issues to everything. Chai knew he was going to have to face the fact that he was probably going to be alone for the rest of his life, and he’d better learn to be okay with that, but like everything else, it was a process. Doctor Woo had told him it wasn’t true; he didn’t have to isolate himself, give up, blah, blah, blah, but platitudes and wishful thinking didn’t change reality. If only they did.
The familiar, rhythmic knock at the door stole his mind away from further pity partying and the faint thought of responding to Sam’s text. “Come in, it’s open,” he said, sitting forward and popping the top of his can of ginger ale.
Holden opened the door and stuck his head in, frowning. “You shouldn’t leave your door unlocked, dude. This neighborhood ain’t that great.”
Chai smirked. “I work with the biggest badass around. I’m not worried.”
Holden’s expression said he liked that, as Chai thought he would. “Even so, lock your goddamn door.” To prove he meant business, as soon as he was inside, Holden shut the door and threw the deadbolt. “I hate to break up your postmoving peace, but you think you’re up for a job?”
Oh thank God. He could get his mind off himself, freeing him from the built-in danger of too many unhappy thoughts. Sure, Chai figured the antidepressants were starting to work, but he wasn’t sure they’d had enough time to build up in his system yet. “Depends. What’s it involve?”
“Looking for a guy who seems to have fallen off the face of the Earth,” Holden replied, taking a seat across from him in the old recliner they’d salvaged. He then filled Chai in on the other details.
Holden also gave him what he got from the wife, including pictures of the man in question. “Do we think Sexy Alexei did, to use a Britishism, a runner?” And Holden had been right about this guy. He was the handsomest teacher Chai had ever seen. Wavy brown hair, clear hazel eyes, a face that was soft and friendly yet really handsome. It was kind of unfair. How come Holden always got the best dudes? It happened too often to be mere coincidence.
Holden shook his head. “Dahlia thinks he’s in trouble, and I’m inclined to believe her.”
This was a genuine surprise. Cynical Fox, believing someone? Chai studied him for a moment to make sure he wasn’t being subtly sarcastic. “You’re serious?”
Holden sighed. “Yeah, I know, but Dahlia’s sharp, and I’m trusting her instincts. If she’s wrong, we’ll find proof of it soon enough.”
Chai nodded, deciding to go with it. He wasn’t going to stop trusting Holden now. But he kept glancing at Holden out of the corner of his eye. Was he okay? The fact that he wasn’t earlier really shook Chai. He had this image of Holden in his mind as super unflappable, and things that didn’t fit that were always jarring. But Roan was clearly his Achilles’ heel. “Any updates on Roan?”
That made Holden pull out his phone and look. Chai had never seen him check his phone so much. “No. I’m going to take no news as good news.”
Chai nodded, as that was sensible, but knew Holden was only pretending to be okay. He wasn’t. He was kind of a mess. Did Chai let on, or did he let him pretend? Chai honestly wasn’t sure what to do in this situation. “Uh, um, you got plans for tonight?”
Holden checked the time on his phone before dropping it back in his pocket. “Not really. I hafta meet Amanda, and then I might follow up with Hel, who was asking around the Jungle. After that I have no idea. I might just drink gin and watch Simpsons repeats in my underwear. You know, a regular Tuesday. Why?”
Chai wondered if he’d had a brain fart, or if he really didn’t know about this. “Wait a minute. You met with Dahlia, but she’s not the only one?”
“No, I set up a meeting last night with Amanda. You don’t know her. She’s a dominatrix. Lots of high-end clientele.”
Chai never got into the whole bondage scene, not even the “minor bit” Holden edged into. He didn’t begrudge anyone their kink, as long as it was consensual, but he was resolutely vanilla, and he knew it. He even had a boyfriend, Clay, who’d claimed that was one of Chai’s biggest problems. He was “boring.” Of course, Clay eventually got way into meth, and Chai was pretty sure he’d ended up either dead or in jail—he’d heard conflicting stories. But nobody had seen him walking around since 2011, and that had to mean something. Nothing good. But Holden, for all he claimed to be “barely” in that scene, seemed to have a lot of friends in it. Then again, that was the type of guy he was—he collected acquaintances and favors and kept them in his back pocket until a time when they might be useful. That seemed calculated and mercenary, sure, but he wasn’t the type to abandon you if he got what he wanted. Holden had a code. “Why would she call you?”
Holden shrugged. “My guess? She has a client who wants a gay experience.”
“That happens?”
“Oh yeah. They want to be forced into it by the dominatrix, which makes it totally not gay. And if the guy is domineering too, it all feeds into the fantasy.”
“Oh my God, you’ve done it before, haven’t you?”
Holden smirked. “Once. It’s weird, but it’s an easy way to make some fast cash.”
“Is she in the room, or…?” At Holden’s nod, Chai held up his hands in surrender. “That’s just… no. Hell no. Doing that with the guy alone would be weird enough, but I hate those voyeurism gigs.”
“Says the former cam boy?”
“That was different. The internet makes it seem removed, you know? Like no one’s really there. That helps a lot.” It really did. He sort of tricked himself into being more outgoing, as Chai was a classic introvert and still had the tendencies. For instance, public speaking was still his biggest fear—and he used to have sex with strangers for money! But Chai kind of created this alter ego for himself, this character Chai who was not him, who could have sex for money or on camera. It was the “fake it until you make it” philosophy he borrowed from Holden. It worked too, until he was relatively comfortable doing these things. But since the accident, he had lost all parts of that and was pretty sure he’d slid back to his default of being afraid of most things. Maybe that’s why he supported Holden’s vigilante thing. Maybe he was using him as a shield. You could be as scared of everything as you want when you knew a guy who could shut everything down and make sure you never had to deal with any of this shit. Why leave your comfort zone if you never had to? He knew he’d withdrawn from the world for a good reason—he had to heal, have physical therapy, the whole bit—but now he wondered if he was just hiding.
Holden raised an eyebrow at him, his smile still sly and a little daunting. “It really wasn’t, but hey, whatever you had to tell yourself.”
He was right, but that didn’t make Chai any less pissed off at his smugness. “Why do you even do shit like this anymore? I thought the detective gig was your job now.”
“If you haven’t noticed, I’m giving more than half of it to you because I’m not very good at it. Fucking I can do. Having oodles of patience is another thing entirely.”
Now Chai kind of felt bad. Did Holden have these small moments of self-doubt? He was as human as everyone else; he simply carried himself like he wasn’t. Faking it until he made it. Maybe that never stopped. That was both heartening and a little depressing.
Chai started looking through the files again, but Holden put his hand
on them and pushed the papers down to the coffee table. “You can start this tomorrow. You just moved in. Enjoy having your own bathroom again.”
Chai smirked. It was weird what a priority that became, but once you were past your early twenties, sharing a bathroom lost whatever charm it had, if it had any at all. He really didn’t know how families with a single bathroom survived. “I can start tomorrow? Excuse me? I thought this was the Krause and Nayar Agency. You gotta earn your top billing, chief.”
“I didn’t think it was top billing but alphabetical order. But okay. Say we start working on this over a nice brunch?”
“Since when are you a brunch guy?”
“Since I really don’t wanna get up before noon.”
Chai smiled. Yep, that was Holden all right. “Fine by me. We’ll work on it then. Hope you know a good place.”
“I do. There’s this place that serves apple mimosas. It’s great.”
“Drinking at noon?” Chai shook his head. “Poor Alexei. We’re never going to find him.”
Of course in the back of his mind, Chai realized that with no case to look into, he’d have time to go out tonight and check out some bars.
It was risky, and his gut was warning him not to do it. He was only setting himself up for disappointment, but dammit, Seattle was a supergay city. There were still a bunch of gay bars and clubs. Chai was going to have to get out there and see if there were any decent guys left.
The funny thing? The idea of going out and trying to meet someone scared him a hell of a lot more than any detective work. And that’s how Chai knew he was well and truly fucked-up.
8—Why Aren’t I Going to Hell
THE MEETING with Amanda was pretty standard, as these things went. She told him about her client and showed him a photo so he could decide if he wanted in on this. The guy was an off-the-shelf middle-aged white guy, one you could find anywhere at any time, for all your middle-aged-white-guy needs. He was thirty pounds overweight, with thinning brown-blond hair and eyes sunken beneath a heavy brow. It was easy to imagine him working in banking or finance or something, and Holden didn’t have a problem with bullying him for sexual purposes. He did indeed look like the kind of guy who got off on that sort of thing. They confirmed a date and time, and of course it was going to be at the downtown Sheridan. Holden wondered if any of the staff would recognize him.
After leaving Amanda, Holden rendezvoused with Hel at a bus-stop bench a block away from the Jungle. Along the way, he stopped at one of those overly fancy gourmet doughnut shops and bought a bag of ludicrous doughnuts, as well as slightly more credible but still suspicious coffee. He asked the woman manning the counter to give him two coffees with the greatest amount of sugar in them she could add. He knew Hel; he knew what she liked. Holden sipped his experimentally—it was toffee almond frappe caramel something—and his head spun from the sugar in one sip. It was like the stuff they fed hummingbirds. Hel would love it.
Holden sat on the bus bench and waited. The sun had gone down, but it was still light enough that not all the streetlights had come on. As an attempt to disguise himself, he wore a baseball cap and mirrored sunglasses, despite the disappearance of the light. He got some suspicious looks from pedestrians and drivers, probably thinking he looked a bit too old to be either a hooker or a drug slinger, which was probably true. Well, not really. Truth be told, he knew some hookers older than him and some drug dealers in their midfifties, but stereotypes persisted.
But this wasn’t a great neighborhood, which meant he was either predator or prey. Holden hoped he looked like prey. He really wanted to surprise the first predator who swung by to give him a try. Hel showed up before he could dish out a well-deserved ass whupping, though.
She sat down beside him, and he handed her a coffee and the bag of doughnuts before they even spoke. Hel was still dressed as she always was, in oversized, ill-fitting men’s clothes that pretty well concealed her gender. Today it was a combination of red plaid flannel, an Army surplus jacket, cargo pants, and sneakers, with her brown hair stuck under a black watch cap. Hel preferred presenting as a man, although she didn’t object to female pronouns. She was pretty much genderqueer, although she never used that term. He liked her because she looked out for her people and fought for them, even though he—and everybody else—knew very little about her. Hel was short for Helena, but that and her love for sugar was about all he knew. She had occasional little vowel inflections that made him think she’d spent some time in the South, and he was pretty sure she was a throwaway—for being genderqueer? Maybe for being gay? He had no confirmation on her sexuality, but the rest was up for grabs. He didn’t even know her last name, but then again, he wasn’t sure anyone besides her did.
Holden waited until she had wolfed down one of the doughnuts and slurped half her coffee before asking her about the Jungle. He had no idea when the last time she ate was. She probably wouldn’t tell him if he asked.
She licked doughnut glaze and icing off her fingers as she said, “Okay, so, there’s a kinda problem with the Burn stuff.”
“What do you mean? I thought Twitch said it was a battle over turf.”
“Yeah, I thought so too, but Anna knows this guy, Wishbone, who’s in the Jungle right now? And he says the main dealers are this pair of brothers, Jacko and Bones?” For some reason, all her statements were sounding like questions. But that was just another one of Hel’s occasional curious vocal tics. He rolled with it. He didn’t have a choice. She paused briefly to bite into another doughnut, this with breakfast cereal on top, and spoke while she chewed, “Anyway, these guys only use guns. If they’d been fightin’ with Burn, they’d have capped him.”
“They could have changed methods, gone to something quiet.”
Hel started shaking her head halfway through his statement. “Nu-uh, these guys are real assholes? They think anything other than a gun is a weapon a pussy would use? Real men use guns? Everything else is weak.”
Oh good. There weren’t enough misogynistic drug dealers on the planet. “Spoken like men who have never been stabbed.”
She snorted. “Tell me about it.” Yes, they were sad members of the survived-being-stabbed club. Holden had survived being shot too, but that was at the Omega compound, so only he and Roan knew about that. He even lied about the nature of his injury to Scott, just to be on the safe side. Having been both stabbed and shot, Holden would have happily reported they both fucking sucked, and neither was weaker than the other. Spare the world from macho men who swallowed that bullshit whole.
“So where does that leave us?”
She shrugged, gulping down more of her coffee. At least she waited to swallow before she spoke. “Dunno. I figured I’d stay there tonight, see if I pick up anything else.”
Holden looked at her askance. “You, staying in the Jungle? Is that wise?”
She shrugged again. “I know some of the people in there, and I figured I could stay with them. One night ain’t gonna kill me. I’ll be okay.”
“Okay. I was gonna give you this anyway, but here.” Holden reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a burner phone, which he’d made sure was charged and had some minutes on it. He slid it to her and hoped passersby would assume it was a drug deal. For the most part, only cops and other drug dealers cared about drug deals. “My number’s in it. Call me if you get in trouble or if you find something out. Or if you need a place to stay. I know people.”
Hel picked up the phone and frowned at it. “I hate these things. Why are people so fascinated by ’em?”
“Because people live their entire lives on phones. Everything’s better when you can face reality through a machine.”
She scowled, clearly disapproving, and Holden didn’t blame her. Holden felt himself getting increasingly alienated from the culture as it seemed to need more filters to interact with people, while real-life shit appeared to be getting worse. He honestly couldn’t tell if it was cause, effect, or both.
Holden was getting ready to lea
ve when she said, “There is one thing, but I don’t know if it connects to anything.”
“What?”
He had to wait for her to gulp down the rest of her coffee. Holden handed her his cup, as he really didn’t need it. “There’s a guy named Dirty Eddie who was doing the same thing as Burn. You know, selling black-market shit. Supposedly he’s been kicked out of the Jungle a couple times, but he always gets back in. It’s not like there’s bouncers.”
Another rival. Hmm. Possible. You could never underestimate greed or stupidity. “He in the Jungle now?”
She shrugged and shook her head. “Dunno. Supposedly he hangs out at this bar called Billy’s a lot, but I don’t know where he is.”
“Thanks.” There were many bars called Billy’s, but there was a spectacular shithole by that name a couple blocks over that had some local infamy. It was a biker bar where they’d had a shootout with the cops some twenty odd years ago, before the gang was taken down with a huge methamphetamine rap. It was no longer a biker bar. The cops knew about it, and it was tainted by the association. But it was still a thriving nest of scum and villainy. If you could go somewhere better, you would. Unless it was your home aquarium.
Holden left Hel sitting on the bench, finishing her last cup of liquid crack, as he walked down to Billy’s. You could see the neighborhoods degrading by the buildings. He heard a sudden noise in a side alley and thought maybe someone was finally going to try him, but looking in, he saw a scruffy alley cat with a rat almost half its size in its mouth. Holden gave it a nod of appreciation, because that was badass. Hell, just catching a rat earned applause, no matter its size. Rats were scavengers, sure, but almost no one commented on how smart the bastards were. He admired them as much as he hated them.
On the outside, Billy’s looked like a dive bar. On the inside, it also looked like a dive bar. At least it had truth in advertising going for it. It was so dark inside it took his eyes a moment to adjust.