Whiskey and Wry

by Rhys Ford

  “I’m not a customer.” He puffed his cheeks out, tasting the whiskey still on his breath. “You aren’t either.”

  “How about some coffee?” One of the waiters appeared at Rafe’s side, juggling a pair of bright white mugs and a steaming coffeepot. He set them down, poured out the pitch-black brew, and smiled widely at Rafe. “I can get you some… sugar and cream. If you want.”

  Sionn rolled his eyes and kicked his friend under the table. Grabbing one of the cups, he muttered at the slender young man standing next to them. “Go get me something to sweeten this shit up, and quit flirting with him. He’s no good for you. Fuck, he’s no good for anyone.”

  “You’re a great best friend there, Murphy.” Rafe stopped Sionn from reaching for the bottle. “None for you, man. You’re drinking your coffee American style, not Irish.”

  The creamer and sugar appeared on their table, and the waiter hung there for a split second, barely long enough to drop off a pair of spoons and napkins. The clink of metal on the table fascinated Sionn, and he picked up one of the spoons and dropped it from a few inches up.

  “The sound changes, you know.” He wrinkled his nose at his friend. “It kind of sounds like Dee when he’s broken a string. Those fecking things draw blood, you know? On his electric. It’s like watching a cobra strike. Scary fucking thing.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Rafe held up his hand. A spray of tiny starburst scars dappled his skin, and Sionn frowned, leaning forward to take a closer look. “Try playing bass. The strings are thicker. So, Dee… your guitarist… you know where he lives? So you can check up on him?”

  “Nope.” Sionn shook his head, then put his hand up to his forehead. It felt like his brain was sloshing about in his skull, and he needed to make it stop. “I just found out the git’s last name today, and Brownie was the one who told me.”

  “Shit, is he still around?”

  “Who? Dee?” Rafe seemed to waver in front of him, and Sionn struggled to focus. “No. I just told you he took off.”

  “No, Brownie. Hell, I haven’t thought about him in years. Not since he busted us for stealing that car.”

  “You stole the car. I just rode in it,” he pointed out. “And yeah, he’s still around.”

  “He still has the mustache he stole from that walrus?”

  “Yeah, all he’s missing is a blue bucket.” Sionn burped, tasting the whiskey on his breath. “He… Brownie… wants me to run Dee down for him.”

  “Do you wanna run him down?” Rafe asked, shoving Sionn’s cup back into his hands.

  “No… yes. Fecking shite damn, I don’t know.” The swirls in his coffee were making him dizzy, and he followed a bubble on a crest until it popped. “It’s stupid for me to get hammered over this. So he fucking ran? Not like we had anything. He played outside of my pub. That’s it.”

  “Yep, that’s it. No reason to drain an expensive bottle of whiskey so fast you’re probably going to puke it up in a couple of hours.”

  He looked up at Rafe’s placid face, unsure if the man was mocking him. Stabbing Rafe’s shoulder with his index finger, he muttered. “I’m not going to throw this up.”

  “Nope, just like you’re not going to go find your boy,” Rafe drawled. “Not like he isn’t a musician and probably will be back out playing someplace with a lot of tourists to make money. Don’t know where you look for someone like that in San Fran.”

  “You are mocking me!” Sionn accused. “Fucker.”

  “Pretty much, and it’s funny. As people would say, you’ve got it bad there, Murphy.”

  The teasing was irritating, more of a burr under Sionn’s skin, but Rafe had the right of it. Dee should be easy enough to find. There really weren’t that many places the man could go to fill his guitar case with cash. The pier was Dee’s best bet and, although long, pretty much contained to the sweep along the bay. If he tried hard enough, he’d be able to find him. It would just take time.

  “He was scared, Rafe.” Sionn rubbed at his face, still hearing the tremble in Dee’s voice before he helped the man up. “And he wasn’t scared for himself… it was for me.”

  Dee’s fear clung to him. More than the guilt he carried with him, Sionn found himself cradling another man’s terror, wondering what he’d done to deserve it. He didn’t need to close his eyes to feel Dee’s trembling in his arms or the metallic tang in the air from the shot metal railing. Those moments dug themselves in deep, spreading out invasive roots until Sionn could only reach for a bottle to yank the taste of fright from his tongue.

  “So, Murphy, whatcha planning on doing?” Rafe rattled the half-empty bottle at him. “Finish this off or tell me how you’re going to find your boy?”

  Chapter 5

  K, you believe in God, right?

  Most of the time. Not at four in the morning before I have to go to work and my boyfriend wakes me up to ask about him, but mostly, yeah.

  Do you think Damie’s in Heaven? I mean, if there’s a Heaven, you think D’s up there with God?

  Shit, Mick. I can’t imagine God not taking Damie, just so he’ll be there for when you go Home.

  —Another 4 in the Morning, Date Unknown

  NEARLY a week after the shooting at Finnegan’s, Sionn began to suspect he’d seen the last of the musician. Leigh shook her head every time he came through the door. He’d spent a few minutes trying to repair the shot amp before giving it up as useless. It had about as much of a chance to work again as there was that Dee would walk through Finnegan’s doors.

  Sionn wasn’t going to give Leigh the satisfaction of showing he missed the man, but damn him if he didn’t find himself hunting for Dee before the week was out.

  Questioning other buskers did him no good. They either were woefully ignorant of other entertainers or protective of their turf. His Friday was wasted trying to get information from jugglers, clowns, and a one-man band. He didn’t have high hopes for his Saturday, but Sionn was willing to burn the hours to find the man who’d gotten under his skin.

  By midafternoon, the sky was uncharacteristically clear, although winter folded a bright nip into the wind to warn off anyone who’d dare get too comfortable. He prowled the piers, pushing his legs until they ached and the scar on his right thigh buckled his gait. Needing to rest, he collapsed onto a bench to rub at his leg, working at the tight knot on his thigh.

  Tired, and more than a little bit angry, Sionn closed his eyes for a moment, wishing away the too-much-coffee and not-enough-sleep headache lodged behind his temples.

  There’d been nightmares when he finally was able to sleep. Blood-smeared and disjointed images where he lay helpless, unable to stop Dee from bleeding out in front of him. The musician lay sprawled on deep gray carpet in a room he knew all too well. The Viennese skyline stretched out around a wide corner, ceiling-high windows polished to a clear sheen to capture the view. If he strained his hearing, he could make out the sounds of a bazaar coming in through one of the open windows, the yodeling calls from vendors competing with birdsong to wake the morning.

  Dee’s head was broken, shattered into bits by the high-powered Magnum the security issued its agents. His eyes were filming over as Sionn watched. It was too late to save him. No matter what Sionn did, he was always too late… for the family he’d been hired to protect or the crying young man in his dreams.

  “Fecking git.” Opening his eyes, Sionn rubbed harder, pushing to break the hard lump of muscle knotting his leg. “Where the fuck are you?”

  Then he heard music—a mournful Delya tune—and Sionn smiled up at the ice-blue heavens, sending up a quick thank-you before struggling to his feet. “Ah, I know the sound of that guitar. You, God, are never to be discounted for giving a poor man a miracle when he needs one.”

  It took him a bit to find Dee. Tucked away in a warren of shops, Sionn heard the guitar before he came around a corner. The strings wept with a mellow sound, painted blue and Mississippi by skillful fingers. Dee’s rough voice carried softly over the tune, and even before Sio
nn had the man in sight, he could hear the shuffle of feet and people murmuring nearby.

  He spotted the black leather cowboy hat he’d wanted to pull off of Dee’s head between a cluster of people gathered around a fountain. Like he had at Finnegan’s, he’d set the acoustic’s hard shell onto the sidewalk and played his heart out. A small crowd had gathered, large enough to cause foot traffic to move around the cluster of people. Some stopped to listen, and others paused in front of the case to drop money into its open flat.

  There was no mistaking Dee for any other than what he was… a musician. Stripped bare of everything but a guitar, he shone brighter than Sionn thought possible.

  Even from where Sionn stood, he could see Dee was lost in the music, focused on nothing anyone could see. Gone was the sarcastic twist to his mouth, and the brashness in his face had been replaced by something Sionn could only call pure. If Dee was beautiful before he picked up a guitar, he was ethereal with it in his hands.

  The blues tune segued to something hot, Latin, and complicated. His fingers plucked and pushed the song out, his head bent over the guitar as if to coax out another seductive moan with a kiss. The cowboy hat Sionn hated sat forward on Dee’s inky hair, but a fleece jacket Leigh’d given him from the lost and found had been tossed aside, leaving him clad only in his T-shirt and faded jeans.

  As if sensing he was being watched, Dee looked up and found Sionn standing behind the crowd. His playing continued, slowing down to a sensual crawl, as if to entice him closer. There was more than heat in the song. It sang of wet mornings spent naked and sipping wine from one another’s cupped palms. Dee swayed with the music, feeling every note on his skin and face.

  It was the most erotic thing Sionn had ever seen. And it pissed him off there were others seeing it as well.

  Dee ended the song with a whispering flick of his nails on the strings, then placed his palm over the guitar’s face to stop its hum. They stared at one another through the crowd, and Sionn stepped forward, shouldering past the thinning streams of people. He reached Dee’s side, unsure of what to say to the man he wasn’t sure if he wanted to bend over his legs and spank or stretch out over someplace flat and drive into.

  Or both. Both sounded like a good idea. If he was with the man much longer, he’d need something sharp to carve the man out. He was going to need to find a way to exorcise Dee.

  Either that or find a way to keep him.

  Sionn spoke first, spotting the goose bumps prickling Dee’s bare arms. “You need to put on your jacket and come with me, boyo. And don’t think about giving me any of your lip. It’d be pretty easy to knock you out and toss your fucking body over my shoulder. God Almighty knows, it won’t be the first time I’d thought on it.”

  “You need to be less bossy,” Dee grumbled, but handed the guitar over to Sionn. Shrugging the fleece on, he pushed its too-long sleeves up over his wrists. “I couldn’t play with it on. And I needed to… play.”

  He almost said Dee shouldn’t have played at all. He didn’t want to share the angelic-faced musician with his long legs and kissable mouth with anyone. The cowboy hat was a mistake too, Sionn thought. It gave the young man a sense of wild, something that begged to be tamed. Flexing his fingers around the guitar’s neck, Sionn tamped down the urge to shove Dee into a dark corner and bite at his cold-blushed lips.

  Instead, he gave the instrument back and picked up its case, careful not to spill any of the money lying on the shell’s red velvet insides. Singing for the crowd might turn the man blue from the cold, but from the bills Dee was plucking from the case, it was apparently profitable.

  “About a hundred.” The guitarist’s damned, haunting mouth twisted into an assessing pout-smile. “Not bad. I’m still rusty, though. My fingers are fucking hurting. My calluses were all gone before. But it’s enough, I think.”

  “If that’s rusty, then God help their wallets when you break off the cobwebs.” Sionn held the case while Dee put the guitar away and locked it up. “You sounded plenty good, a rún. You should be playing someplace big. Not here in front of a burger joint for coins.”

  Dee bent forward to tuck the cash into Sionn’s front pocket, the back of his hand sliding down Sionn’s thigh before he could pull away. His fingers burned through the soft cotton fold of Sionn’s pocket, and he nearly put his hand over Dee’s to keep him there.

  “That’s for the window that asshole shot out.” Dee slid free, bending down to pick up his guitar. “Sorry about that.”

  Sionn could feel the tired and scared rolling off of Dee. If the past week had been rough on him, he couldn’t imagine what Dee felt like. Cupping Dee’s chin in his hand, he gently guided the man back around to face him.

  The guitarist’s cheek was hot in Sionn’s bare palm, and Dee shivered at Sionn’s touch but didn’t pull away. They were someplace Sionn couldn’t say would be safe if he kissed Dee the way he wanted to. Instead, he rubbed his thumb over Dee’s jaw, then let his hand fall away to his side.

  “You’re trouble, Dee boy,” Sionn muttered under his breath. “But I get you. I do. Something shitty’s happened to you, and I’m guessing you’ve got nowhere else to go. But you’ve got my word that I’ll help you.”

  “That guy was shooting at me, Sionn.” It wasn’t a surprise to hear Dee admit it. Sionn’d shot dead the last person who’d tried to kill him. He didn’t have anyone else he knew of on his ass, so it had to be Dee the gunman was after. “I can’t bring that to you. It’s not—”

  “You’ve got to trust someone, Dee. If not me, then who? Who else do you have?” The edge of Dee’s mouth felt too cold, and Sionn went back to rubbing some warmth into his cheek. “I can handle myself. Probably a damned sight better than you can. Just let me know what to expect and it’ll be all right. But you’ve got to talk to me, boyo… and trust me.”

  “Betcha say that to all the boys who get your place shot to shit.” Dee smirked at him through his fingers, but the humor didn’t push away the shadows in his troubled eyes.

  “No, you piece of shite, not all the boys,” Sionn grumbled as he took the hat from Dee’s head and ruffled his hair. “Just the one I seem to want to fuck.”

  SIONN’S place was different than Damien had imagined it would be. Tucked away in Chinatown, the building shouldered up against smaller buildings, stretching up five stories to look down its nose at the street traffic below. Sionn’d parked his Jeep in one of the nearby lots and hurried Damien across the street, jogging behind him with the guitar case in the hopes of beating the rain.

  Three feet away from the building’s entrance, they lost their race when buckets of water dumped out of the sky above.

  The lobby was little more than a square of tile wide enough to hold four or five people, with an elevator door on either side. Dark and smelling of fried noodles from the restaurant next door, the space felt sticky and hot despite the cold coming through the crack under the foyer’s glass doors. The elevators were old, with wood paneling and an accordion door blocking anyone from entering. A tiny key on Sionn’s key ring fit into a slot by one of the elevators, and the man rattled the door back, letting Damien inside. Sionn got in behind him, punched the top right button of the two uneven rows set into the wall, and the car lurched once before heading up.

  Given the entrance, he’d been expecting a long, narrow hall with doors leading off into equally tight apartments. What he got was an open-spaced loft with glass tile demiwalls separating out rooms and a view of San Francisco Bay being pounded by a chilly storm.

  “Holy shit, this place is awesome.” Damien set his guitar down and stepped into the main living space. The wood floors beneath his wet sneakers squeaked slightly from the damp rubber treads, and he guiltily hopscotched back and shed them by the door. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Sionn replied. “I’ll go get us a couple of towels and some coffee. Go make yourself at home. I’ll be right back.”

  A large burgundy sectional took up a lot of space near the bayside slice of
the loft, arranged to mostly face the big-screen television anchored to a brick wall. A dining table sat opposite, with a weight bench and some exercise equipment set up farther away. The rest of the loft was hidden from view behind glass-tile stands or curving plaster walls rising about ten feet from the floor, far below the space’s open-beam ceiling.

  Damien padded over to the sectional and settled into a corner of the sofa, stretched his legs out, then rubbed away the sweat forming on his palms. It felt good to stop moving. He’d spent most of the week running, looking over his shoulder for murdering blonds or an elusive warehouse that seemed to never be where he thought he could find it. The only constant in his life appeared to be Sionn and the pub, and he’d fucked that up without even meaning to.

  “You can do this, Damie,” he told himself. “You were going to do it anyway. Just fucking tell him the truth, and if he thinks you’re nuts, then you can walk away. Easy enough.”

  Except walking away from the broad-shouldered Irishman would hurt. Even if they’d not done anything more than share cups of coffee and talk at times—one fucking hot kiss did not count—he’d come to depend on having Sionn near him. Solid as granite, the man became someone he’d clung to, even as he kept his distance. Damien liked knowing Sionn was there.

  He’d woken up that very morning determined to hunt Sionn down at the pub. His empty pockets and a knocking on his door from a pissed-off building manager drove him to the sidewalks so he could make some cash. But when he saw the Irishman standing in the crowd, Damien took it as a sign he’d made the right choice in talking to Sionn.

  Lying on the man’s couch, exhausted from playing for hours and damp from yet another soaking, Damien was no longer so sure. There was too much to lose. Sionn was too much to lose.

  It had been a hell of a fucking hot kiss.

  Somewhere around one of the opaque glass walls, a coffeemaker gurgled, and the smell of beans giving up their juice floated through the loft. He shed the fleece and tossed it to the ground, worried it was too wet to lay on the suede sofa. Lulled by the sound of the rain outside and the soft couch cushions, Damien forced himself to sit up, scrubbing his face violently to slap some sense into himself.