by Teri White
“Yeah.” She took a big bite of the frozen yogurt, swallowed, and smiled. “I got hot again and you weren’t there.”
“Sorry about that.”
“You should be.” She pushed the empty bowl aside, got up, and came over to him. Her mouth bent to his; she tasted cold and minty.
His hands slipped under the T-shirt she was wearing and gently massaged her breasts. “I’m here now,” he said into her neck.
“Umm-humm,” she murmured.
Nobody said anything for several moments.
“I don’t think your mind is on what your hands are doing,” she said, her voice muffled against his neck.
“You’re right,” he said. “I was thinking about those kids out there. The way I use them.” Gar sighed. “Sometimes I wonder what makes me any better than the creeps who buy their bodies,” he said. “I use them for my own purposes, just like the johns. I get what I can, pay them off, and walk away.”
She pulled back and looked at him. “You’re not like them. You try to help the kids.”
He shrugged.
Mickey frowned. “Damn it, Gar, you’re a kind man. Why do you think I love you?”
He studied her face, touched her lips gently. “Sometimes I wonder.” This was getting dangerously close to things he knew were better left unexplored. She loved him and that should be enough.
“You don’t really wonder, do you?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Lord, what an idiot.” She smiled. “Because you’re a good man.” She planted a kiss on his cheek. “You’re a good man and there aren’t so many of those out there.” The smile grew even brighter. “Plus the fact that you’re sexy as hell.”
He snorted. “Sure. Cosmo wants me for a centerfold.”
“Well, they can’t have you. You’re all mine.”
Gar felt a sense of peace wash over him. He wasn’t as good as Mickey thought he was, but as long as she believed in him, he would keep trying.
Christ, that sounded like something out of a bad old movie. Could it be that life was really just a “B” melodrama? It wouldn’t surprise him a bit.
They kissed again and this time when their mouths separated, they were both panting a little. “Bed,” Mickey said.
“Bed,” Gar agreed.
Spock watched them leave the kitchen.
12
1
He woke up with a real bastard of a headache.
It took all of thirty seconds for him to remember in excruciating detail all that had happened the night before. When the whole miserable experience came back to him, he groaned aloud and pulled the sheet up over his head.
What a complete fuck-up. When the history of fuck-ups was written, this little incident would be right at the top of the list. Never in his entire professional life had everything gone so wrong.
And it wasn’t over yet, because now he had that damned boy locked in his bathroom. Could that be considered kidnapping? Probably so, and that was just fucking great, wasn’t it?
Finally realizing that just lying in bed all day wasn’t going to help things at all, Robert came out from under the sheet and then got up from the bed. He pulled on some jeans and walked down the hall to the bathroom. Carefully, he untied the rope from around the knob and pushed the door open slowly. He was half-expecting to be jumped or something. Maybe the kid had armed himself with a Bic razor. But nothing happened and so he took a cautious step into the room.
Beau was asleep in the bathtub, using a rolled-up towel as a pillow. He was breathing softly and steadily. Robert looked at him for a moment, then turned and left the room, not closing the door this time.
He plugged in the coffeepot and went to fetch the Times from the front porch as it brewed. Although it was much too soon for there to be anything in the paper about Marnie Dowd’s killing, he looked anyway. Nothing.
Two cups of the strong black coffee settled his stomach enough for him to take a chance on a bowl of heavily sugared Shredded Wheat. Caffeine and sugar were two of his favorite hangover cures.
“Hi.”
He looked up quickly from the sports page. Beau was standing in the doorway, looking hesitant. “Come on in,” Robert said flatly. “Sit down.”
Beau paused, gnawing on his lower lip, then moved slowly to join him at the table. He still didn’t relax, but sat perched tentatively on the edge of the chair.
Robert shoved another bowl and the box of cereal toward him. “You might as well eat.”
Beau dumped some Shredded Wheat into the bowl, covered it with sugar and splashed milk on top, all without saying anything or even looking at Robert. He took one bite, chewed, and swallowed slowly, then set the spoon down. “Are you still mad at me?” he asked in a near whisper.
“Hey, don’t you think I have a damned good reason to be pissed?”
Beau nodded. “Yeah. And I’m really sorry.”
“That’s great. Except that being sorry doesn’t help at all.”
“No. I guess it probably doesn’t. But I didn’t know …”
“And now you do.” Robert got up and poured himself another cup of coffee. “Does knowing make you happy?”
Beau shook his head. After a moment, he sighed and started eating again. Between bites, he asked, almost casually, “Are you going to kill me, too?”
“I damned well should,” Robert said glumly. “It would serve you right.”
Beau just kept eating.
Robert pinched the bridge of his nose. The headache was better, but still there. “The only problem with that is, I just don’t want to.”
“Thanks.” The blue gaze flickered his way. “How come you wanted to kill the woman last night?”
“You don’t know a damned thing about what was going on last night. About why I did what I did.”
Beau finished the cereal and pushed the bowl away. He rested both arms on the table and leaned forward, staring at Robert. “You could explain it all to me,” he said. “Then maybe I could understand.”
Robert played with the gold ring in his ear. How much to tell him was difficult to decide. “You remember me telling you about my brother?”
Beau nodded.
“A few years ago, he got into some trouble and he pulled a jail term. While he was inside, a man named Danny Boyd hit him. Andy went into a coma. Stayed that way for over three years. He just died.”
“I’m sorry,” Beau said.
Robert looked at him. “Thank you. Anyway, Boyd is out of prison now and I’m going to kill him.” He said it flatly.
Beau was quiet.
“That broad last night—she was just a junkie whore, by the way, no loss to anybody—she was Boyd’s girlfriend. She threatened to turn me in. So I was only protecting myself when I whacked her. I was just doing what had to be done.” He met Beau’s gaze and tried to read the expression there. He couldn’t tell what the boy was thinking.
Finally Beau lowered his head and rested it on his folded arms. “I do know how you feel,” he said in a muffled voice. “If I could get the bastards who killed my parents, I’d do exactly the same thing. So I really understand, Robert.”
“I’m glad,” Robert replied, meaning the words without knowing why he cared a damned bit about what this boy thought of him. There was more, of course, that he should tell Beau, but that would lead him into very dangerous waters. No sense doing that until and unless it became necessary. “But there’s still a problem, you know,” he said.
Beau raised his head and looked at him. “What to do about me, you mean.”
“What to do about you, right.”
Beau smiled faintly. “Well, you’re not the first person to have that problem. I’m trouble for everybody.”
Robert stood and carried the cereal bowls to the sink. He rinsed them extra carefully, using the time to think. “I can’t just let you go. I’m sorry, Beau.” He turned around in time to see the expression on Beau’s face. “I’m not going to kill you,” he said quickly. “But I can’t just let you go, eithe
r.” The implications of what that meant he wasn’t prepared to deal with at the moment.
Beau closed the milk carton and carried it to the refrigerator. He shrugged. “I don’t have any place to go anyway.” He leaned against the fridge, looking at Robert. “So you’re going to find that guy Boyd and kill him, is that it?”
“That’s it.”
“Okay. I won’t get in your way. Promise.”
Robert shook his head. “This is pretty crazy.”
“Yeah, I guess so. But things have been that way lately.” Beau pushed himself away from the refrigerator. “I’m going to take a shower.” He paused. “I don’t want to bitch or anything, but my clothes are starting to feel pretty crummy.”
“All right. We’ll take care of it.” Robert dumped the coffee grounds down the garbage disposal.
Beau nodded and left the kitchen.
Robert was still wondering what the hell he was getting into when the phone rang. He reached for it. “Turchek,” he muttered.
“Mr. Turchek? This is Mr. Brown.”
Right.
“That package we talked about last week?”
“Yeah?”
“Please take care of it for me. As soon as possible.”
“All right.” He hung up. Damn, this was a job he couldn’t afford to turn down, but it was going to get in the way of his search for Boyd.
And it was going to make the problem of Beau even more of a problem. He sighed and wiped the counter with a wet paper towel.
Robert exchanged empty smiles with the shiny-clean teenaged sales clerk at the Gap. Beau was in the dressing room trying on a pair of jeans. Already some khaki pants and several shirts—with color-coordinated socks, of course—were piled on the counter.
Life was not going as planned.
But since he couldn’t see any other way to play it at the moment, Robert was just trying to stay calm. He even managed another smile as Beau emerged from the cubicle, the 501 button-fly jeans in his hand. “Those okay?”
“Fine,” Beau said, adding them to the pile. “Thanks for this. I’ll pay you back.”
“Sure you will. Out of your inheritance, right?”
“Right.” Beau seemed serious.
Robert took out his wallet and handed the credit card to the clerk.
When they first walked into the mall, he was more than a little nervous about what the kid might do. Maybe he’d run yelling to the first security guard who appeared. But a uniformed hire-a-cop walked by almost immediately and Beau did nothing. Still, Robert couldn’t let himself really relax. He kept a close eye on him.
When the clothes were all paid for, Beau picked up the bulky plastic bags and followed him out of the store. Their next stop was the Taco Bell in the food court.
Beau ate quietly for a few minutes, then paused and wiped hot sauce from his chin. “Can I ask you something?” he said in a confidential voice.
“You can ask,” Robert said, unwrapping his burrito.
“Do you have your gun with you right now?”
Robert frowned and glanced around quickly. No one was sitting close enough to hear or seemed to be paying them any attention at all. “I always have it with me,” he said shortly. “Why? You planning on making a run for it? Go ahead. I’m not very likely to pull my piece and blow you away in front of several hundred witnesses, am I?”
Beau picked up another taco. “I’m not going to make a run for it. Like I said, there’s no place for me to go. And I’m not afraid you’ll shoot me.” He ate half the taco. “I only asked because … well, maybe somebody is looking for you. Like you’re looking for that guy Boyd.”
Beau was staring at him. It took Robert a minute to understand what the kid was saying. “Don’t worry about that,” he said. “I can take care of myself. And I can take care of anybody else, too.”
Beau looked relieved.
“Finish up,” Robert said brusquely. “There’s things to do. By the way, we’re going to drive to Vegas tonight.”
“Las Vegas? Why?”
“Business” was all Robert said. “We need to buy you a toothbrush, right?”
“Right.”
Robert sighed. “Me and fucking Mary Poppins,” he muttered to himself.
2
Robert figured that, if necessary, he could make the drive north on I-15 to Las Vegas blindfolded. Over the years, for one reason or another, he had been required to make the trip more times than he wanted to remember. Always for business reasons; Vegas was not a place he would ever go to for fun.
Whenever possible, he liked to make the trip at night. It was just after midnight now and the miles were slipping away almost painlessly.
Beau had been asleep in the passenger seat for most of the trip, but suddenly he was awake again. “What kind of business are we going to Las Vegas for?” he asked.
Robert accelerated around a truck. “Have to find a man named Tony Drago,” he said. “A gambler. Very low-level kind of guy.”
For a moment, he thought that Beau was going to ask him something else about Drago and Robert didn’t know what the hell he would say. But instead, Beau said, “I’m hungry.”
“Again?” Christ, there wasn’t any satisfying his appetite.
They went another two miles or so and then spotted a diner. Robert pulled into the lot, parking between a truck and an old Pontiac. Right inside the door, two state cops were having coffee and doughnuts at the counter. At the sight, Beau stiffened and looked at Robert. He ignored them and chose a table by the window. “Sit down,” he ordered.
Beau dropped into a chair, still looking at the cops.
“Knock it off,” Robert said.
“They don’t scare you?”
“No, they don’t. Not a fucking bit.” He yanked a menu from the plastic holder. “I’ll tell you what does scare me,” he said.
“What?”
“You. You scare the shit out of me, Beau.”
Beau blinked, bewildered. “Me? How come?”
Robert didn’t answer.
After a moment, Beau reached for the other menu.
He really did hate Las Vegas.
The insistent neon, noisy casino-hotels, the glitzy broads all decked out in sequins. And everywhere you looked, the clusters of tourists in their polyester clothes, propped like Robotrons in front of the slots. It all came together in such a cacophony of sound and light that he wanted to run the other way as quickly as possible.
Instead of doing that, however, he drove directly to a motel on Tropicana Avenue; it was a place where he could always get a room, even with no reservation. They knew him and they knew the people who were his clients. They called him Mr. Turchek and always gave him the best room in the place.
It was nearly 4 A.M. by the time they hit the room. Beau went into the can and came out a few minutes later, wearing his undershorts and T-shirt. He sat on one of the beds.
Robert sat on the other bed and looked at him. “Beau, there’s something I have to tell you.”
“Sounds like bad news,” Beau said, smiling faintly; his eyes, however, were darkly solemn.
“It’s not good or bad,” Robert said. “It’s just a fact. Something you need to know now, because I can’t take a chance on having you freak out later.”
“I don’t freak out much.”
“Yeah, well.” Robert lit a cigarette. “I told you before that I’m here to see a man named Drago, remember?”
“Yeah,” Beau said tentatively.
“Well, when I find him, I’m going to kill him.”
Beau bit his lip and didn’t say anything for a time. “Did he have something to do with Andy getting killed? Like the hooker?”
Robert shook his head. “I’m not going to lie about it. This killing is different. This is just business.”
“What kind of business?” Beau said in a low voice.
“My kind. That’s what I do, Beau, I kill people. For money.”
“Why?”
“Who the hell knows? Mostly becaus
e I’m good at it, I guess. And it pays well, if you’re good at it.”
Beau shook his head. “But I like you. You don’t seem like a killer.”
“The truth is the truth. Sorry if this shatters any illusions.” Robert stood and went into the bathroom. He leaned over the sink and splashed cold water into his face. Maybe he was just giving the kid a chance to take off if he wanted to. Robert knew that if Beau did leave, he wouldn’t go after him. It might be stupid and dangerous, but life itself was a crapshoot. Somehow, he had the feeling that even if Beau did run away, he wouldn’t squeal to the cops. Robert thought he was a pretty good judge of character.
He stripped down to his Jockeys and went back into the other room.
Beau was in bed, with the blanket pulled up to his chin. He didn’t say anything, but his eyes watched Robert cross the room.
Robert got into his bed and switched out the lamp.
“Robert?” Beau said into the darkness.
“What?”
“I don’t understand. How come you do this?”
“Life just turns out that way sometimes.” Robert sighed. “Look, Beau, I was only a kid when I hit L.A. with Andy. We needed money to live on, just like everybody else, and it seemed like the only people willing to pay me enough wanted me to do things that weren’t quite legal.”
“What things?”
“Hot-wiring cars. Heisting merchandise. Running numbers. Bill collecting. Little things that got bigger and bigger. Then one day I killed a guy, mostly by accident.” His voice was low; nobody had ever heard this story before and Robert didn’t quite know why he was telling it now to Beau. “Somebody heard about what I’d done and wanted me to do it again.” Even though Beau couldn’t see him, Robert shrugged. “That’s just the way it happened.”
“It makes me feel funny,” Beau said. “Sort of nauseated.”
Robert didn’t say anything.
“Who do you kill?” Beau asked then.
“Mostly whoever they pay me to. We’re not talking your regular kind of folks here,” he said. “It’s basically the scumbags of the world. Bad guys. They ask for it, most of them.”
“Like Drago? Did he ask for it?”
Robert snorted. “Yeah, you could say that. I mean, how stupid do you have to be to run off with the wife of one of the biggest gangsters in the whole fucking state?”