“Shitstorm just started, kid. Del’s got a loud mouth, and he don’t like you.”
“Fuck that. I’m more pissed that asshole stole our case!”
“No one stole shit. We’re still working the trafficking angle.”
“Our fucking suspect is dead.”
“Which just means we don’t have to subpoena financials,” Luis poked a finger in my forehead. “And we can trace the others involved.”
Oh. “Well, okay then!” I glared across the station at Del. “Why are we here?”
“Why are you still yelling?”
Because I was fucked. I was royally totally incomprehensibly fucked. “Because I fucked up,” I replied, voice lowering. Even Marco was giving me a pitying look, and he had to partner with Del, the skeeze of the whole department.
“Yup,” was all Luis said.
Nice. No sympathy there. I had to grin, desperate though it was. “Kiss it and make it all better, daddy?”
“Tell me again why I put up with you?”
“I always let you drive?”
“That’s so you can stare at my cock.”
“I hear gay men are allergic to polyester and bad fashion. Your cock will always be safe.”
By the time we were at our cars, our banter had significantly reduced my panic. Folding his arms over top of the opened car door, Luis pointed his key at me. “Go see Angelica. You’ll feel better.”
“She’s not taking my calls, or emails, or texts.”
“That’s why you go see her.” He climbed into his car and drove off, leaving me to mull over that piece of advice. Or was it an order?
Revelations and Bruised Egos
How did it work to be gay and still be moved by how beautiful Angelica was? Even in her old college sweatpants and a ratty t-shirt she retained her elegance. Only the dark circles under her eyes gave me any indication she was suffering. It felt longer than four days since I’d seen her. A whole lifetime of revelations lived in the span of this week.
From behind the open door, a frame of music mournfully surrounded her. I barely refrained from wincing at the lyrics. “Can I come in?” I asked, hoping I sounded as contrite as I felt.
To my surprise, Angelica tried for a smile. Her lip trembled upwards and then twisted into a grimace. “I wish you wouldn’t.”
“Please?”
She stared past me, out onto her front lawn, eyes glazing and then tearing. The fact that I’d never seen her cry made me reach out. I wrapped my arms around her waist and kissed the top of her head, pulling her into my embrace. “We weren’t even that good together,” she laughed, hugging me back. “Can’t think why I’m this upset.”
“I’m sorry. It was selfish of me to come here.”
She muffled another genuine laugh into my shoulder. “Austin Glass selfish? What else is new?” Her hands snuck under my jacket and flattened against my back. They were so small and warm.
“Ouch,” I smiled through the melancholy. “Want my gun? I’ll go get it for you.”
“Ask me again in ten minutes,” she said, taking a deep breath and pulling away. I dropped my arms, feeling the urge to fidget with my tie. A sudden recollection of Sister Francis’s ruler slapping my fingers had me jamming both hands in my pockets as I stepped inside.
The main entry hall with its marble floors and vaulted ceilings was meant to be intimidating. Angelica often brought opponents here, leaving them standing there while she pretended to be engaged in a phone conversation. Fortunately, I was already too anxious to let it affect me as I followed her into the house.
She took me to the bar, which was diagonal to the sunken living room, and stepped behind it. “Bourbon, neat?”
“A double if I’m going to be here ten minutes. I want to be numb if you decide to shoot me.”
“I do want to shoot you some days,” she admitted tiredly, setting the glasses out and pouring slowly. “It’s just so…you. Most days I want to shoot myself, for thinking I could change you from the asshole that leaves women at the altar.”
“Honestly, Angel, I’m not panicking about the wedding. I know you still think that, but that’s just not it.”
She took a dainty sip, licked her lips and leaned across the bar, avoiding eye contact. “I went online to these websites that Jessica said might help. Would you believe there’s a small cult of women in my situation?”
“Women with douchebag fiancés?” I drew circles along the rim of the glass, waiting for when, or if, she’d face me.
“Women left by gay men,” she clarified. “Most of them kept blaming themselves. Saying things like, ‘I should have known, he would only have sex a certain way’ or ‘He kept hiring the same contractor who didn’t know how to build anything’. All I could think was, ‘Not my Austin. No one would guess’.”
“Least of all, him,” I said quietly with a smile. That’s when she turned to me, frowning.
“How do you not know something like that, Austin?”
“You bury it so deep that you forget it’s there,” I sighed. “And when it tries to surface, you grab someone, or something, and use it to help keep it buried.”
“Melissa,” she said. I nodded at the mention of my other ex-fiancée. “And Justine.” She grabbed the bottle, stepped down into the living room and curled onto the couch.
I followed, sitting down beside her, resting my head on the back of the sofa, its leather caressing my neck. “And night school rather than college, double shifts, overtime to have an excuse not to date or spend time with whoever I was dating, no single friends, no male friends except for Dave, always women who wanted commitment,” I added. “I never had to think of it again with them. Just plow ahead into family, kids, eventually work my long hours at the FBI.”
“Until what? What changed? Did I do something?”
“You and a slew of events,” I said honestly, hoping it didn’t sound like an accusation. I was hoping for a lot of things tonight. “I just stopped giving a fuck what Desmond Glass thought after he ended his affair with you. You were so broken for a while after that.”
“You knew? Before we started dating?” I nodded my response. “And you didn’t say anything?” At the rate we were tossing Bourbon down our throats, we’d have to be spatula’d off her cream carpet soon.
“Because I didn’t care that you were using me to get back at my father. Next to Dave you were the closest thing to family I had, and being with you was the only time being with a woman felt natural, pressure-free.”
“Did you just compare me to being your sister,” she scoffed, pulling her feet up on the sofa and using my lap as a headrest. “Because I knew you were demented, but…”
“A distant cousin, twice removed,” I assured her, twisting the end of her ponytail in the ensuing silence.
“Austin…?”
“Yeah, Angel?”
“I think I did know.”
“How’s that?”
“Sometimes the sex was just awful.”
My ego made a muffled cry from under that blow.
Stumbling home around three the next afternoon, I checked my voicemail as I let myself in the house. Luis had left a message, reminding me to be in early on Monday to pick through forensics’ findings.
Spending the night talking had been cathartic, but the lack of sleep was pushing me into a coma. With the upcoming morning promising to be a smorgasbord of stress, I decided to forgo the gala and rest in preparation for Monday’s hell. I flopped face-first on the bed and fell asleep in my clothes for the second time that week.
You’re Invited to the Wedding
No amount of jogging or working out could ease the worry over today. Not only did I have Del’s knowledge of my identity crisis to stress over, I had the fact that I was dating a prostitute who was both a person of interest in Alvarado’s murder and his former lover. What I didn’t need (but what the universe saw fit to jab my balls with in its quest to see how far I could fall in a week) was a phone call from my father on the way to meet Destiny�
��or Fate, whichever bitch was playing with my life.
“Glass,” I answered, flipping my visor down against the sun.
“Austin,” my father’s gruff voice grated in my ear, familiar but distant at the same time. “Who is this person I’m hearing about; making you break things off with Angelica?”
I grinned maliciously. “That would be my ho-mo-seckshuul boyfriend. He’s moving in this weekend.”
Silence.
Then, “Don’t be a fool. Think about your future and quit vying for attention. Do you think the FBI will take you knowing you’re…”
“A faggot?” I finished gleefully. Huh. Way more fun than I’d thought it would be. Maybe I’d give him a coronary. “Fudge packer? Homo? Queer? Butt Pirate? Turd Driller? Cum drin—”
“You’re not amusing. You’re just destroying your life to get back at me. Go back to Angelica. She loves you. You love her.”
Why Dad, I thought, you sound almost as if you care. And of course this had nothing to do with the fact that I might make news, right? Austin Glass Homo-extraordinaire Strikes Again. I was sincerely digging ‘Butt Pirate’, but the Homo-extraordinaire sounded like a superhero. How awesome would that be?
“I’m thoroughly embracing the gay right now, Dad. Guess what. I won’t even be the one that gives. I’ll take it, Dad. Right up the ass. And you know what? I’ll like it.” The thought even made me squirm. “I’m probably going to marry him I’ll like it so much. Buy him a boat or an island or just some really kinky butt plugs. Oh look, a homo sex shop. I can sense those now that I’m gay. It’s like a beacon, calling me home. A butt plug beacon. I think I need to stock up on merchandise.” I didn’t even know what a butt plug was. Mostly I was just trying to piss off my father.
“Now you’re just being droll. Do you know he’s a male prostitute?”
Daddy investigated Peter? Shock. Who knew he cared. “Was. Was a male prostitute. I noticed you emphasized the prostitute part, but not the male part. You’d feel better if I picked a less prostitooty boy?” Prostitooty? I might have gone a little hysterical as I neared work. The sex shop gave me an idea of how to handle the rest of my day, though. I pulled into its parking lot.
“I’d prefer you didn’t do these things to piss me off.” Uh oh, Daddy’s cussing. Things must be bad.
I sighed, because regardless of what he thought of me, at one point I did love my father. It hurt like shit to love someone that just shut you out, but I was done with all of that. “I have to go now, Dad. Sign on the window says there’s a special on cock cages.” What the fuck was a cock cage? I wasn’t ready for gay sex shops, obviously.
Silence.
Right about now my father was venturing how hard I was trying to get back at him by moving in with a guy whose last name I don’t know. Of course he didn’t know Peter and I had nothing to do with each other anymore.
“Don’t worry, Dad, even though I can’t legally marry Peter in Colorado, we’ll be sure to invite you to the one in—” I grinned wider as the phone signaled Desmond Glass had hung up.
Givin' It Before Gettin’ It—Always Beat Them To the Punch
Just seeing my partner cheered me up immediately. As he lifted his eyes over the computer monitor, I placed a giant butt plug on his desk. It reminded me of a mini beige traffic cone. “It’s an early hump day gift!”
“Jesus, save me from idiots,” Luis said, eyeing the plastic encased sex toy with an expression that could only be described as beaten.
“And, because I love you so much.” I tossed an issue of Butt magazine next to the other present. No kidding, there was such a syndication.
“There’s no being around you.”
“No lube, though. Wasn’t on sale,” I whispered loudly.
“Just get to your desk, cabrón.” Luis typed as I sat down. I presumed he was sending me the new evidence collected by the crime scene unit. Studying my inbox, I was proven correct. My eyes scanned the pages of financials as I removed my jacket.
“Alvarado’s bank accounts and my partner has a new term of endearment for me. Things are looking up.” I checked out my crotch. “Soon anyway.”
It was no secret around the station; that was apparent from the collection of goodies in my drawers and atop my desk. I gingerly removed a framed picture of a man’s anus and tossed it in an envelope addressed to Delmonico, placing it in my outbox. A muffled sound had me opening my center drawer. A vibrator switched to ‘on’ rolled noisily toward the edge. A few tubes of lube came tumbling after. “Hey, Luis. I was wrong. I do have lube. You like the cherry flavored kind?” I thanked the entire station and pocketed the lube and about six of the hundreds of condoms overstuffed in my second drawer. The banana was a quandary. I wasn’t sure if it was meant as an innuendo or a snack from an admirer. I ate it, and left an issue of Bears magazine prominently displayed on my desk. Because I was thoughtful like that.
I was sure worse was to come, but I could take it. I’d keep telling myself that, hoping eventually it would be true.
Luis shook his head and tossed the butt plug and magazine in the trash. “You are several kinds of fucked up, cabrón.”
“Uh huh,” I mumbled around the banana. While I scrolled through the account, I seriously considered pouring some cherry flavored lube over the fruit like it was syrup, just because some of the guys were watching for my reaction to my ‘gifts’. They got bored when I gave none.
Three hours later I was deep into trying to make sense of a spreadsheet while my partner was trying to run down the last of the passport owners by checking with snitches, hospitals and local illegal immigrant safe havens. “Luis,” I double clicked on a few entries in the software program Alvarado used to keep track of money. Most of it was to legitimate businesses, or so it seemed. In reality, a lot of it was probably laundered through one of the enterprises or all of them. The trick was to find out which ones and trace the money backward. “Something seems off.”
“I love it when you say that,” Luis said, moving around behind me to see my screen.
“Has the accountant looked through this yet?”
Luis shook his head. “He’s on it now. Why?”
“How much cash did we find at Alvarado’s?”
He reached over and pulled a file off his desk and flipped through it. “Two hundred twenty-five thousand and some change.”
“Well, assuming that money came from—”
“Glass! My office. Now.” Captain Ashanafi Mangistu’s dark face glared at me from his office doorway. Max Delmonico smirked just behind him.
I grabbed my jacket, standing up and pointing at the screen. “If that two hundred grand in cash was from the recent smuggling, then what’s that exact amount doing in Alvarado’s books, funneled through—”
“Now would be best.” The captain’s accent rolled across the station house, depositing its load of sarcasm in my ear.
Suspension Without Pay
An hour and a half after jerking my arm out of Luis’s grasp without a word, I drove home. I sat on my sofa, pounding Johnny Walker Black like it was my new bride and this was our honeymoon. Well into my fourth glass, listening and thinking of nothing but the sheets of rain outside, my doorbell rang. It took four buzzes and continual hammering against the wood to finally register: someone was at my door.
I launched to standing, fell back into a wave of dizziness and laughed. Crawling seemed to be the best option here, and it got me safely to the door—but not before my shoulder was detoured by an end table. Using the knob I pulled myself up and opened to greet my visitor.
“Oh, good. I was wondering when you’d come to finish me off,” I told Peter.
“Are you drunk?”
“Are you my mother?” I laughed. “Never mind, she can’t raise her brows through the Botox. You can’t be her.” How he got his hands into his jean pockets while they were wet was something only sober me could ask. Drunk me just stood there and stared at his hard nipples poking through his wet cotton shirt.
“I
need your help.”
I laughed harder. Nearly doubling over. “You need my help? Naïve, clueless li’l ol’ moi?”
“Please.” I could barely hear him through the rain.
“Go away, little boy,” I sneered and went to shut the door.
“Please.” He pushed his hand against the wood. “Please. I’m begging you. They arrested Cai.”
“I’m suspended. Can’t help you.” I huffed a laugh completely lacking in amusement. “Surprised you didn’t try and take the blame.”
“I did. But I was with Darryl at The Manhole. About thirty people saw us. He didn’t do it, Austin. He didn’t kill Iss.”
“Not couldn’t?” I asked with a lucidity I didn’t realize I had. “Didn’t? Not couldn’t?” I cursed my curiosity.
Peter bit his lip, making my groin stir before he turned away. Down boy. “I need him out before they…Before they find out who he is.”
“And who is he?” I asked, fully expecting to be lied to, ignored, the question bypassed.
“Nikolaj Strakosha.”
Slow as my mind worked, synapses swimming lazily through whiskey, I pinpointed the name while Peter drowned on my doorstep. “The eight-year-old who took out Nikki the Nail?”
Chapter Ten
Who’s Using Whom?
Although I was crazy curious about Cai, there was this perverse enjoyment of Peter standing there, getting soaked, looking as lost as I felt. My little bit of revenge backfired, however, when I noticed how his t-shirt stuck to his chest, and how his abs outlined out against the cotton. Instant sobering fantasies.
Peter’s indecisive expression returned, manifesting in the pull of his bottom lip between his teeth and the squinting downcast eyes. I could almost hear his brain churning out the question, ‘Use sex or not?’ The fact that he turned me on didn’t embarrass me nearly as much as his knowing how much he affected me. That, and understanding how naturally it came to Peter to use the information to his advantage. We were at odds, a still-frame: I—trying to breathe while ignoring my urge to push him over the sofa and lick the rain off his stomach, and he—considering how best to use my attraction.
Shattered Glass Page 14