I saved her the effort. “I was going to say that you could crash on the desk if you wanted. It’s warmer up here than in the basement.”
She gave me a weird look, as though she was a little disappointed I didn’t even offer a Hallmark sentiment she’d said she didn’t want.
I did not understand women. At all. The end.
She shook her head, tying back her wild hair with a rubber band from my desk. “I’m going back to the equipment room. I just need to close my eyes for a couple hours before we figure out what we’re going to do.”
“Well, I’m kind of at an impasse.”
“No offense, but our ‘we’ doesn’t include you. I think you’ve done enough.”
“Then I hate to break it to you, but you are both part of mine. This is still technically your fault, or have you conveniently forgotten that?”
“Have you forgotten that your psycho friend killed a man in my home?”
“Have you forgotten that my psycho friend possibly saved your life?”
“I am not continuing this conversation until you at least put your pants back on.”
Dammit. The strength of my argument might have been damaged by delivering it in my boxers with the pee-hole wide open. I hastily addressed my pants.
Ginny closed her eyes and blew out a rum-soaked breath. “Listen, I’m drunk and exhausted. I need to crash out. We’re both in bad places right now. Let’s hash it out in the morning.”
“Fine.” I caught myself before I thanked her for the sex.
She walked down the steps and I looked at the two phones charging on the desk. My burner had almost a dozen messages. The first was from Underdog, telling me we had to talk. Well, that we did. I didn’t know how he’d gotten the number, but it was most likely from Junior. The second and third were from Junior, cursing a lot and saying that they hadn’t charged him with anything yet. Three more from Underdog. More of the same. More of Junior cursing.
The last was from Twitch.
Yeah. These guys are done. They did an awesome job. Didn’t have to shoot anybody, so I guess that’s a plus.
Well, wasn’t that just ducky.
Place is cleaner than when we got here. I’m, uh, gonna have some beers with them and then I guess I’ll go home. They’re all right. They gave me a card in case I ever need their services.
Jesus. Nice to hear that Twitch was making new friends.
So I guess I’ll go home and I’ll find you tomorrow. Peace.
I had no doubt he would find me. I was a little afraid he would.
I looked at Byron’s phone and my heart-rate skyrocketed.
There were twenty-four messages showing.
The display only told me the number of messages, not who they were from, or when they were from. I needed to know who was so eager to get in touch with the departed. Especially if any of those messages happened before Byron got himself cooled.
I needed to crack the password.
And I had an ace up my sleeve where technology was concerned.
I needed Ollie.
I rang his phone, but he didn’t answer, no doubt still pissed off at us.
When the voice mail beeped, I said, “Ollie, call me back, brother. We need your help.”
I took a few more pulls off the whiskey bottle to calm my newly excited brain.
I had something, but the answer was going to be unavailable until the morning, at least.
I closed my eyes and lay my head down with a smile on my face for the first time in days.
Gotcha, fucker.
***
“Wake up.” Ginny placed a black coffee next to my head, then handed me a bagel.
“Thanks. What time is it?”
“Ten after one.”
Good Christ. The bar was already open. I was hungover, but damn, the sleep felt good. I looked at the burner. No message from Ollie. Guess there was my answer to how pissed off he still was.
“Where’s Dana?”
“He’s downstairs. Audrey is trying to get some hair of the dog into him. He’s not quite made of the sturdy stuff that we are.”
“Keep an eye on him or Audrey is going to jam the entire kennel down his throat.”
“If I say he can handle himself, are you gonna say something wiseass?”
“It’s a safe bet that I might.”
“Then let’s leave it at that. How’s the uh…” She wiggled a finger at my new hole.
I gave it a quick look. It had stopped bleeding, but was rimmed with a fiery red inflammation. I was going to have to get some anti-bacterial ointment and redress it. Last thing I needed was to add an infection to my list of growing ailments. “Looks dandy,” was all I said to her.
“Can I say I’m sorry again?”
“Sure. You made up for it,” I said, trying to lighten the air.
“Just…don’t,” she said, holding a hand up as she turned and walked back down the stairs.
Self-esteem awaaaay!
I shoved a huge chunk of bagel and cream cheese into my mouth and followed Ginny down to the bar. I chased it with a scalding mouthful of Dunkins, which woke me more with the burning than the caffeine.
Dana sat at the bar, looking greener than the Grinch and about half as happy. Audrey was doing her thing, Jack and water in one hand, the other rubbing Dana’s back with a motherly love. “Drink it, hon. You’ll feel better.” She took a gulp of her own beverage, then slid a merciless pint of Bloody Mary toward Dana.
“Gah,” Dana replied before turning a half shade greener. With a jade-hued hand, he gamely took a big gulp, shuddered, but held it together.
Burrito scuttled up and down the bar, happily ignoring any and all health codes against fat hairy bags of fur in a food service area. My adopted dog gave me a thousand-yard Chihuahua stare and snarled. I could say he was mad due to my two-day absence, but the mangy prick was probably more concerned that I was there to take him home, away from Mama Audrey.
I sat down next to Dana. Audrey auto-piloted a shot of whiskey onto the bar in front of me. I dumped it into my coffee and took a big sip off the top. “So, let’s begin at the begin. When did the shit start hitting the fan with you and Byron?”
He pressed his eyes together tight. “There was no shit. There was no fan. We hooked up over the course of a few months. We went dancing. I went to see his band on Mondays. We hooked up when it was convenient. We weren’t looking for anything more than that. Nothing that should have wound up…where we are now.”
“Is there anything, anything at all, you could tell me about what he did outside of playing in a band and fucking you?”
His eyes popped all the way open, and he shot me a look of indignation. “Well, that’s awful presumptuous.”
Ginny shook her head at me, disgusted. “You’re such a dick.”
“The fuck did I presume now?” I broke off a piece of bagel and put it on the bar for Burrito, who sniffed at it before licking at the cream cheese, giving me the hairy eyeball the whole time.
“How do you know who was fucking who, straight boy?” Dana’s lip curled in a sneer.
“I was being metaphorical. He fucked you financially, didn’t he?”
Dana and Ginny looked at one another.
“Listen,” I said, “we all need to let whatever preconceptions we’ve got hanging over us go. You’ve both been pissy with me and Junior because of ours. I’m trying, really trying, to let my issues go. You two need to do the same if we’re going to get anywhere here. For starters, could the two of you at least try to treat me like I’m not a flying asshole? ’Cause I’m really trying not to be.” I looked to Dana. “I’m sorry if you feel like I was making assumptions.”
Dana rolled his eyes. “As am I, then.”
“To be fair, your own dog doesn’t seem to like you very much,” Ginny said, nodding at Burrito.
Burrito bared his crooked teeth at me again with a whistling snarl.
“Okay, if everyone is through crapping on me, can you two get yourselves back to the
place where you liked me? Or at least where you liked me enough where you thought I was useful to your cause? I need your help here. Did you want me to say it? I’m saying it. I need your help.”
“Was this point before I knew that you and your heterosexual life partner were violent homophobes?” Dana said with a sneer.
“You serious right now?” I said, my blood pressure ticking up a notch.
Ginny put her hand on Dana’s forearm. “I don’t know how to help you, Boo. I really don’t,” she said.
“What about you?” I said to Dana.
“What about me?” he said. “I didn’t ask for your help in the first place. I didn’t want any of this.”
“We’ve all fucked up here, one way or the other,” I said. “Least we can do is work together to un-fuck the situation as best we can.”
“My only mistake was a poor choice in boyfriend,” Dana said.
“Let’s not forget your pirating something that belonged to him that led to his death. Let’s not forget that, shall we?” I said.
Dana just turned his head from me.
“How about starting with the issues you two had with one another,” I said, hearing a pleading in my voice that made me angrier. Blood pressure up another notch.
Dana braced himself with another mouthful of spicy tomato juice and vodka. He gave a pained sigh before he spoke. “Three weeks ago, Byron came back with the band from Europe. They had a couple gigs in Amsterdam and Germany. He came back, dropped some of his stuff at our place, then disappeared on us. After a week, I started getting pissy with him about the money he owed me—which he said he would pay me when he got back.”
“I had to cover Dana’s rent for the month,” Ginny said.
“I didn’t even have the rent because of that asshole.”
I thought about the amounts of irony in play. How much could the rent have been? A grand? How much did Byron owe Dana? Maybe a couple grand? The whole time, a fuckload of money sat in the closet. More than any one of us would see over a long stretch of our lives, if ever.
And Byron, schmuck that he was, couldn’t get to it. He could have easily given Dana back the money that he owed out of the trumpet case.
But if he paid Dana out of the case, the people who the money belonged to were going to notice. People who were openly willing to kill for that kind of money.
And that could include a lot of people.
It was the Ouroboros of idiocy.
“Think the band might know?” I asked.
“Know what?” Dana said.
I almost blurted out about the money. Maybe I didn’t need any more whiskey. But I sure as hell needed the coffee. Hell with it. I took another gulp of my laced brew. “Anything. Anything at all. Anybody who Byron might have pissed off enough—”
Ginny cleared her throat loudly, then darted her eyes past me to the bar.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Audrey hovering, her bartender ears tuned into our conversation while she polished the one martini glass behind the bar. The martini glass that hadn’t had liquid in it sine 1983.
Christ. There was no way we were going to have this conversation without me accidentally saying something I wasn’t supposed to or them saying something Audrey didn’t need to be party to.
This was going nowhere. No matter how many times I tried to dig out anything, anything at all that could help, they didn’t know a goddamn thing. They just didn’t.
All I had left was the band. “You said you saw them on Mondays?”
“They have a regular gig in Cambridge every Monday night at Blue Envy.”
“Are they playing tonight?”
“Is today Monday?” Dana said, not bothering to hide his disdain.
“You know, Dana? All that shit about us not helping you because you’re gay? That’s one thing. Right now, I would choose not to help you simply because you’re an asshole.”
Ginny stood up. “Okay, boys. We’re all tired, hungover, and a lot freaked out. Why don’t we all take a deep breath and try to work out what to do?”
“That’s what I’m trying to goddamn do here. And his bitchy attitude isn’t helping,” I said, jabbing a finger at Dana’s forehead.
“My bitchy…” Dana said, his voice rising. “My bitchy attitude?”
“Watch it,” I said.
“Or what? You going to have your little buddy put a bullet—”
I grabbed him by the throat.
“Boo!” Ginny yelled
I heard Audrey, old school as ever, mutter into her Jack and water, “Talk a lot of shit, spit a lot of teeth.”
Without a word, I dragged Dana through the bar, down the stairs, and out the back.
Ginny followed, yelling, “Don’t hurt him, Boo. Let him go.”
I fired a look at her. “We’re simply going to have a nice talk.”
I slammed him into the door-bar on the back door and pushed him all the way into the parking lot with my hand on his neck.
He let out a soft, pained grunt as I shoved him hard against the dumpster. “Listen up, you little dickhead,” I said. “I’m at the point of not giving two shiny fucks anymore. You hear me?”
Dana’s eyes were wide, his lips staring to go purple. He tried to say something, but his air was being constricted by the fingers o’mine I had clenched around his trachea.
“If you’re understanding me, nod before you pass out.”
Dana’s chin moved.
“Boo!” Ginny said sternly as she followed us out.
I wheeled to her. “Shut your mouth, Ginny. Little man wants to talk tough? Then let him bring some tough to the table. I have had fucking enough!”
Ginny flinched under my fury.
I’d tried to be nice.
I really had.
“You can both see that, right?” I said.
Ginny nodded.
I felt Dana’s chin move atop my fingers in an attempt to nod.
“Good. Now let’s get something straight right here. I’m about a day away from my brother being railroaded for a killing he didn’t do, and I’m on the fast track to following him right into a jail cell. I am beyond a point of caring about your issues when you’re going to be a dick when I have questions for you. Understand?”
Dana nodded again.
“Just so you know exactly where I’m at, I don’t give a rat’s ass who you fuck, how you fuck them, or whatever goes up, into, or around your anus. What I care about is keeping me and mine out of a cage. What I also care about is the simple fact that you’re a goddamn asshole, and no amount of sexuality is gonna influence my opinion deeper one way or the other.”
Ginny said softly, but firmly, “Get off of him,” and reached for my hand. With equal restraint, I took her in a tight grip by the front of her sweater and held her off at arm’s length.
“Almost done,” I said. But when I turned back to Dana, I saw the last thing I wanted to see. The look he was giving me had shed any fear that he was going to be hurt by the big bad man.
What I saw was the hatred and sadness of a small man. A small man who got called “faggot” his entire life. There was a shaking defiance in the look, and in my mind, I could imagine the other tormentors he’d faced off with that expression. Every jock who stuffed him into a locker. Every alpha who tried to knock him down simply because he thought he could, or should dominate the small boy who acted like a girl.
I was now in their company in his mind. And now I saw his bitchiness and attitude for what it was—his only weapon in a dangerous fucking world. Especially dangerous when guys like me and mine called him names, slammed him against dumpsters.
He’d been hurt before by other big bad men. I was presenting him with nothing to fear that he hadn’t faced over and over again.
I let him go.
Dana sagged against the dumpster, his back sliding down the cold metal until he planted onto his ass, flakes of rust falling into his hair.
I let Ginny go too, and she ran over to Dana to help him back to his feet.
/>
I still felt he was an asshole.
And his moustache was hella stupid.
I wasn’t the bad guy here, but I sure as fuck wasn’t the hero.
I wiped my hands on the front of my jeans, trying to maintain control though my self-righteousness had slipped into discomfort at being the bully. “So, now that that’s done with, I’m gonna tell you what we are going to do. We are going to go back to the bar, you are going to answer my questions. That okay with everyone?”
Ginny tried to immolate me with her eyes. Dana wheezed and nodded.
“Good. Let’s go back in. I’m freezing my balls off.”
Audrey made a point of not looking at us when we re-entered. “Everything okay?”
“Peaches,” I said. “So again,” I said to Dana, “Byron’s old band is supposed to play tonight?”
He cleared his throat. “Unless they’re on the road. Or if they’re even able to play. They are missing a trumpet player.”
True that.
“What time they go on?”
“Nine-ish?”
It was almost three. I had some time to kill before I could talk to the band. I needed to make things right with Ollie somehow. Other than the band, the cell phone was the only road I had to any place other than IAin’tGotShitsville.
“What are you guys going to do?”
“What can we do?”
“You can go home.”
“Can we?” Ginny asked, glaring.
I opened my mouth to answer, but then felt hypocritical for telling them they could. I’d abandoned my apartment right quick after the first assault. And those guys, whoever the hell they were, only left me with the impression that they were there to lay down some hurt on me. Not to end me like Galal Shaughness was there to do. Maybe. “It’s all handled. Unless you want to go back to my place.”
“Excuse me?” Ginny said, offense in her tone.
My mind raced What the fuck was her problem now…ohhhhh sheeee-yit. I held my palms up to her. “Wait, wait, wait—are you thinking that with all that’s going on, I’m coming on to you for another round of abuse you call sex?”
Ginny’s mouth formed a perfect O of horror and wrath.
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