Forever

by Tinnean

  He hadn’t arrived yet. I took a seat at our table in the alcove. The menu rested across my plate. I’d wait a bit to see if he was going to show up.

  There had been times when I’d be there ahead of him, perusing the menu, and my cell phone would hiccough—yeah, literally. I’d flip it open to find a text message that simply read, “Sorry,” and I’d know that Quinn had been sent out of town on assignment at the last minute to clean up someone’s mess.

  If he had sent the message on paper, I would have had to do something dramatic, like burn the note in the candle’s flame and crush the ash between my fingers, but sending a message on paper was for amateurs, and Quinn wasn’t an amateur.

  I’d erase the message in my phone and order dinner. Sometimes it would be a repeat of our first dinner together on my birthday, penne a la vodka followed by veal piccata. The food would be good, as usual, but it would have been better with my lover there.

  I was casually studying the other diners, when, “Hi.” Quinn had arrived. “Sorry I’m late.”

  I grinned at him. “No problem. I just got here myself.”

  He sat down and reached for his menu. “What looks good?”

  Aside from him? “I thought you might pick something out.”

  “All right.” He glanced through the menu, then closed it. “How about something simple tonight?”

  “You in a rush to get me alone?”

  “Always.” He smiled, and touched the tip of his tongue to his upper lip. “The house salad and ravioli di salmone?”

  “Sure. I’m easy.”

  He laughed quietly, and I studied him, my mouth going dry. This man—this man—was mine.

  Our waiter approached the table with a basket of breadsticks. “Signori?”

  Quinn gave him our order.

  “And would you care for wine with your dinner?”

  “Mark?”

  I nodded.

  “Yes.” Quinn smiled at him, and I didn’t understand why the waiter wasn’t melting under that smile, but it was his good fortune that he wasn’t. He’d been our waiter for as long as we’d been coming to Raphael’s, and I’d hate to have to kill him.

  Not to say that I wouldn’t, if it looked like he was even considering making moves on my lover.

  The waiter did one of those Italian hand gestures, and the wine steward bustled over.

  “Sì?”

  Quinn ordered a wine that would complement the salmon in the ravioli, and did the tasting thing, which was always a pleasure to watch. He was the epitome of sophistication, although he never made a big deal of it. Once he was satisfied with the vintage, we waited while the wine steward poured some into our glasses and then left.

  Quinn was silent, picking at a breadstick, which was a little unusual for him, and I cocked an eyebrow at him.

  “Something going on I should know about? Or shouldn’t know about? In which case, you know I’ll make it my business to find out about it.”

  “I don’t doubt it at all.” His smile was a little wry, and I wondered what was putting those frown lines between his eyes. I was pretty sure Holmes was behaving himself for the time being, and as for Wexler, he had too much to worry about to get involved with anything.

  “How’re things on the West Coast?”

  “All right, I guess.” He seemed reluctant to say anything more, and dammit, that hurt.

  But I just shrugged. “Glad to hear it.”

  “Mark, don’t be a pain in the ass. A crowded restaurant is the last place I want to discuss what’s happening out there.”

  “Want me to go take care of it?”

  “No, it’s been taken care of. Uncle Tony—” He stared at me. “How do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Get me to talk, even when I have no intention of talking.”

  “We’ll talk about it later, okay?”

  Before he could say anything else, our salads were brought out, and the waiter offered the pepper mill. Quinn nodded, and there was the rhythmic ratcheting of the pepper being ground over his salad.

  “Signore?” The waiter offered it to me.

  I shook my head; he gave a short bow from the waist and hurried off to offer other diners the pepper.

  Once we were alone and had begun to eat, Quinn murmured, “The holiday season is approaching.” He seemed particularly interested in a leaf of arugula.

  “You could say that,” I agreed cautiously. There were still a couple of weeks until Thanksgiving.

  He put down his fork and looked across at me. “I always spend Christmas with Mother.”

  “Yeah, so? You can do what you want, Mann. I don’t have you on a leash, you know.”

  “You really are a pain in the ass, Mark. What I want is for you to spend it with Mother and me.”

  “You… uh….” I reached for my glass of water. If I drank the wine, I was sure I’d swallow it wrong and choke on it, and it was too fine a vintage to abuse that way. “You do?”

  Christmas had never meant much to me. The last time I’d spent the holiday with family had been just before my father left. Uncle Steve had joined us, and I’d gotten a pocketknife and a BB gun. “Just don’t shoot your eye out, short stuff.”

  That was before my old lady started hitting the bottle with a vengeance. Christmases after that had been spent with other men, and they hadn’t been bad, but that had been the best—

  That had been a good Christmas.

  “What does your mother think of that idea?”

  “Mother is all for it. She’ll be calling you to confirm. Face it, Mark. She likes you. So do I.”

  In spite of the fact that I was sipping water, I choked.

  “Yeah, well, Novotny doesn’t, and he’s gonna be seriously pissed, Quinn.”

  “Are you going to let that keep you from joining us?”

  “Let me think about it, okay?”

  He sighed. “Mark—”

  “Are you going to finish that last olive in your salad?”

  As I’d hoped, the abrupt change of topic distracted him.

  “Here.” He impaled it on his fork and then offered it to me.

  A quick glance around the restaurant showed that no one was close enough to observe. I leaned forward, parted my lips, and took it from his fork, a replay of what he had done with the roasted peppers on my birthday.

  “Jesus!” he whispered, his eyes hot, “I want you!”

  “Good,” I growled at him, feeling blood pool in my cock. “The feeling is mutual.”

  “Will you mind if we skip the movie tonight?”

  I wanted to reach across and stroke his hand, but I kept my fingers busy pulling apart a breadstick. He had to ask?

  “Nope, I won’t mind at all.”

  II

  THANKSGIVING was two days away, and my lover and his mother were going to be spending that day with me. I figured we’d watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, maybe catch a rerun of The Wizard of Oz, and then stuff ourselves with the dinner I’d ordered from a local catering company.

  And as the saying went, a good time would be had by all.

  Throughout my condo, there was still the bite of fresh paint, as well as the odor of the sealer that had refurbished the bamboo wood floors we’d found under the Pepto-Bismol pink carpeting in the living room. The new furniture was spare and masculine, a far cry from the frilly, girly stuff the previous owner had crammed the place with. Curtains of deep forest green covered the windows now, making a nice contrast to the muted green of the walls.

  That was what Theo said, at any rate.

  Theo had done a damned good job. I’d wondered if he’d pitch a fit because I’d taken Quinn rather than himself to pick out dining room furniture.

  I hadn’t planned on that to begin with, and I’d turned down every suite Theo’d pointed out, finally telling him I intended to turn the dining room into a library.

  But then Quinn had been so excited at the thought of having Thanksgiving here that I’d decided to indulge him,
and to do that, I needed a dining room table and chairs, as well as a buffet and hutch.

  I’d come to the condo while Theo had been overseeing the arrangement of the furniture. He’d stared pointedly at the china cabinet and muttered, “I’m your interior decorator, goddamnit!”

  “No, you’re not.” He’d looked hurt, and I huffed and finished what I’d been about to say. “You’re my friend.”

  And he’d preened and then insisted on going out to shop for dinnerware to go in the hutch.

  So, yeah, my condo was looking good, but I didn’t want Mrs. Mann to see it for the first time since I’d moved in with its glory dulled by a layer of dust, so I was going around with one of those flexible static duster things.

  As I dusted, I thought about the shit that had gone down earlier in the fall. The fallout for Senator Wexler had been satisfactory to a degree—he’d been stripped of his office and didn’t dare show his face in public for fear of being ambushed not only by the paparazzi, but by the legitimate press as well.

  I’d have preferred to see the man dead after a long, excruciatingly painful time, but it was the Manns’ call, so mostly I amused myself picturing what I would do to him if Quinn and Mrs. Mann ever turned me loose.

  I even did a little looking into it….

  I HAD the phone number for every department and department head of the WBIS programmed into my cell phone. This time I pressed the number for the doctor who was currently running the infirmary.

  “Max Futé ici.”

  “Max, it’s Mark Vincent.”

  “Ah, M’sieur Vincent. It is very nice to hear from you. I trust all is well?”

  “Yeah, fine. How are you?”

  “I am well.”

  I wondered how true that was. I’d run into Smitty one day a few weeks earlier, when he’d been asked to come in to do an autopsy. He was taking a lunch break, and he’d dropped his tray down on my table in the cafeteria—staff wanted to sit with the pathologist as much as they wanted to sit with me.

  According to Smitty, Max had finally realized that whatever he felt for Browne was never going to be returned, and so while Browne was off on assignment, Max had moved from the apartment they’d shared for almost six months into quarters the WBIS had on-site for our staff.

  “I wanted to offer him my place but—” Smitty shrugged.

  So that was the way it was. “Why didn’t you?”

  “I thought it was too soon.”

  “Remember, faint heart never won the fair lady.”

  He looked at me like I had lost my mind. I hadn’t; it was just Quinn rubbing off on me. Not that I was about to tell that to anyone.

  I patted his shoulder. “Good luck.”

  “Yeah, but with the way my luck runs, Browne will probably buy a clue and they’ll wind up having a commitment ceremony.”

  “Then make your move, and ‘too soon’ be damned.”

  “You think?” He looked hopeful.

  “You bet.” And then I got the fuck out of the cafeteria.

  Their private life wasn’t my worry, and I pushed it from my mind. “I need to talk to you, Max,” I said as I rolled to a stop at a light. “Are you busy?”

  “At the moment, no. Do you wish for me to meet you in your office?”

  “No, I’m on my way in to work. You’re in the infirmary?”

  “Oui.”

  “Okay, then. I’ll stop by to see you. I should be there in about twenty minutes.”

  “Bien sûr. I will await you in the doctors’ lounge. Shall I have coffee and croissants for you?”

  “That sounds good. Au ’voir, Max.”

  “Au revoir, M’sieur Vincent.”

  The little French doctor didn’t seem fazed by my request to talk to him, but then he’d been with the WBIS long enough to settle in, and he’d impressed The Boss enough to be given the position he now held.

  Traffic was heavy, so it took a little longer than the twenty minutes I’d anticipated before I arrived at WBIS headquarters, and I jogged up the stairs to the third floor and down the hall into the doctors’ lounge.

  The WBIS might not have a lot of doctors on the payroll, but we saw to it they were treated well. The infirmary held four beds and was large enough for six in a pinch. It had the most up-to-date equipment—a forty-slice CT scanner, MRI, portable X-ray—and all the bells and whistles that were available.

  The kitchen off the doctors’ lounge had not only a sink, microwave, and refrigerator, but a stove as well, while down the hall were sleeping quarters with attached showers for the times they needed to stay on site for longer than twenty-four hours.

  And of course there was the suite Max was living in. I’d never been in it, but I’d seen the specs, and it was a cushy place. I had the impression he would have preferred to share it with someone, and I wondered if he’d take Smitty up on his offer, if Smitty ever got off the pot to make it.

  The lounge itself had a couple of sofas, comfortable chairs, a scattering of tables to hold snacks, and a twenty-seven-inch flat-screen TV mounted on a wall. Today was on.

  Max was alone in the lounge. He looked around as I entered, and smiled. Considering what he’d had to do while he’d been part of Prinzip, it was one of the sweetest expressions I’d ever seen.

  “Bonjour, m’sieur.” He gestured toward a couch, muted the TV, and rose. Once I’d sat down, he handed me a cup and a plate with a warm croissant that dripped butter.

  “Hi, Max.” I put the cup down on the table beside the couch, took a bite of the croissant, and then accepted the napkin he offered me as butter started to drip down my chin. “Thanks. I have a question for you.”

  “Ask. Whatever it is, I am at your service.”

  “You shouldn’t do that, you know. You have no idea what I’m going to ask.”

  “You have helped me get a green card so I can stay in this country, and more than that, you have seen to it that I can still practice medicine.”

  “The WBIS looks after its own.” His gratitude made me uncomfortable.

  “At the time, I was not one of the WBIS’s.”

  That was true. “But you kept Browne alive at the risk of your own skin.” I could see he was going to protest, and I held up my hand. “Look, all I was trying to point out was that you should be careful what you agree to, especially here. Just like any other organization, this one has its share of rotten apples.”

  “Pardon?” It was obvious he was confused.

  “Never mind. I’ve got a hypothetical question for you.”

  His expression of confusion deepened, and I sighed.

  “Imaginaire.”

  “Ah, oui. Bien sûr, demandez.”

  “Okay.” I knew it was going to be easier to explain in French, so I switched to that language. “Now, suppose there is someone I wish to punish.”

  “To what degree?”

  “The highest.” I washed down the last of the croissant with a swallow of black coffee. “I want—that is, I would want him to suffer for the rest of his life. I would want him to be at the mercy of those who would see to his care. He would be awake, aware, but unable to move a muscle, unable to talk. A kink in the hose supplying his oxygen could result in death.” I set the cup aside. “What would you suggest?”

  Max turned pale. “For a desire for punishment this great—there is but one thing. The… walled-in-alive disease.”

  I understood his loss of color. Pressure would be placed on the brainstem, destroying functions there as well as the lower portion of the brain, but leaving the upper portion untouched. It took some practice to get the pressure on the arteries to the brain right, to not trigger a stroke and kill the target outright.

  “Can you do it?”

  Max turned even paler, and his eyes took on a wounded look before he dropped his gaze to study his fingers, which were twisting in agitation. “Oui.”

  “When you were with Prinzip, did Richard make you practice on the WBIS agents?”

  “Oui. Non. They were… they were in th
at state when Solange—Oui.”

  I nodded. I wasn’t surprised. Back in the day, Richard had been a ruthless son of a bitch, and the fact that he’d been losing it by the time he’d started up Prinzip hadn’t done anything to alter that. He’d enjoy tormenting those at his mercy like that.

  “Please, m’sieur. I owe you much, but please do not ask this of me.”

  “Relax, Max.” I could make him help me simply by asking him if he wanted me to do some practicing on my own, and I had no doubt he’d cave, but some people just weren’t cut out for that kind of work. And anyway, at this point, I had no intention of doing anything to Wexler. “It was just hypothetical.”

  He licked his lips. “C’est vrai?”

  Yeah, it was as much of the truth as he needed to hear just now. “C’est vrai.”

  I finished the coffee, thanked him again, and then went up to my office.

  III

  AT YOUR SERVICE, the catering company I’d hired to prepare the dinner for me, had called earlier to confirm that everything was in order and would be delivered by 10:00 a.m. Thursday morning: shrimp cocktail for an appetizer as well as a platter of crudités; a pasta dish; a turkey and a ham; three kinds of stuffing; four vegetables; a variety of salads; pumpkin, pecan, and coconut custard pies; wine to go along with each course; coffee beans ready to be ground for a brew that would be the perfect conclusion to the meal; and a partridge in a pear tree.

  We were going to be six adults and a kid, and although I didn’t know squat about what kids ate, beyond McDonald’s or Burger King, At Your Service did know, and they’d have every base covered, or they wouldn’t be happy with the results.

  My doorbell rang, and I swapped the duster for my Glock. Quinn was out of the country, and I wasn’t expecting anyone else.

  A glance through the peephole revealed an all too familiar face. What the fuck was Novotny doing here? He was supposed to be going up to New York. I didn’t bother wondering how he’d gotten past the gates. I’d known they were shit from the moment I’d seen them. Even a Feeb could bypass them.