Cheap as Beasts

by Jon Wilson

  “Mr. Colette?” Morgan O’Malley’s voice sounded two entire registers below its usual tone.

  “Sir.” I can’t quite claim I was expecting the call, but neither was I wholly surprised by it.

  “Sir?” He tried to laugh and bring his voice back up where it belonged. “That’s a bit formal.”

  “Unfortunately, I’m with a client. Perhaps I could telephone you back?”

  “Oh, I see. Yes. Well.” He coughed. “Do you think you could manage it today? I mean, it’s nothing urgent, only…well, you did receive the check I sent you?”

  “Yes, sir.” I had received both a two hundred dollar check and an accompanying gift. I looked at the far left corner of my desk where the crystal cigarette holder stood. It was a sparkling, expensive piece of work and had no business being in that office. Which, naturally, made it the perfect metaphor. “You should receive a full accounting of charges by the end of the week.”

  “Wonderful. Only, I mean, I could pick it up. Or you could drop it by.” He took a deep, preparatory breath. “I did invite you to dine once, and you were busy. I’d very much like—”

  I cut him off. “As I said, sir, I’m with a client. You’re at the home number?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry. Yes, I am at home and should be all afternoon.” He paused then, and though I did not hear him draw a breath, I calculated that he was working himself up to something again. “Listen, Colette, just so we’re clear. I talked to Hobie Wainwright about you. I mean, he referred me to you in the first place, I suppose you know, and, well, I…I figured if anyone could…I’m referring to that business…I mean, what that policeman said at the house. Well, Hobie told me…he told me about your friend.”

  “My friend?”

  “The sailor. The one who—”

  I found myself sitting forward again, frightened by the sound of my voice. “Sir! I’ll telephone the moment I’m free. Now, really, I must hang up.”

  “Yes! Yes, of course.” He sounded apologetic and maybe slightly frightened himself. “I just wanted you to know that I knew. That I understood.”

  And as soon as he said that, I realized that of course he didn’t understand at all. One thing you learn talking to shrinks is that when they say they understand, you can bet it means they’re measuring you for a straightjacket. I told him goodbye and barely waited for his goodbye back at me before returning the receiver to the cradle. I sat back but didn’t put my feet up again.

  “Who was that?” Gig wanted to know.

  “You ever heard of Hobie Wainwright?”

  His eyes widened. “That was Hobie Wainwright?”

  “So you know him?”

  “Sure. He owns Bayside Sunset Magazine and about a dozen papers up and down the coast. How do you know him?”

  “I don’t,” I admitted. “Never heard the name before.”

  “That’s cause he’s super rich. Doesn’t deign to mix with those of us down at street level. Why was he calling you?”

  “He wasn’t. That was an ex-client. Something about a billing problem.” I tried to clear my head by jerking it up suddenly. “What were we talking about?”

  Gig thought he might like to pursue the Hobie Wainwright angle, but I wouldn’t indulge him, mainly because I really had never heard of the man before. Still his name kept tugging at the back of mind as we rehashed the details of Ramona Wyman’s murder. Just like the crystal cigarette holder kept drawing my eyes. And Morgan O’Malley’s telephone number kept repeating over and over in my head.

  I finally got rid of Gig, dialed O’Malley’s number, and managed to arrange to meet him without too much discussion. In fact, his eagerness confirmed for me just how imperative our meeting was.

  He joined me at nine-thirty outside The Rusty Spike, down near the bayside wharfs, where the quiet streets and well-spaced lamps made it easy to slip unnoticed into the nearby alley.

  He was suitably receptive to my placing both hands on his shoulders and guiding his back to the wall. Even though he tried to sneer and tell me, “You know, I don’t normally patronize dives like this one.”

  I pushed up against him, nudging his chest with my own. I lowered my head, and he was just enough taller than me that I could butt my forehead against that heroic chin of his. “You like me, don’t you?”

  “You certainly have your allure, Mr. Colette.” I couldn’t see it, but there was the sound of a grin in his voice. “Declan.”

  “Yeah.” My eyes were clamped shut, and I had to force the words up my throat. “I like when you say my name like that. Say it again.”

  “Declan.”

  I slid my hands down off his shoulders and onto his arms, kneading his biceps beneath the layers of his shirt and jacket. I pushed his right arm back, guiding it gently around behind his waist until I could snake my own right hand down and around and take hold of him by the wrist.

  Apparently finding his arm pinned behind him wasn’t quite cause for alarm. He made a purring sound, like a tiger rather than a kitten, deep and sexy. “What’s this?”

  I didn’t answer, but I shoved him more roughly up against the wall. I put my left hand on his chest, pressing there before rubbing down his belly then back up, slowly, teasingly. He felt hard as granite to me under the rich fabric of his shirt. Michelangelo’s David indeed. He tried to kiss me. His lips brushed my forehead as I nuzzled the side of his neck. His big powerful body was moving slowly against mine.

  “Declan.”

  He continued to squirm slowly, sensuously giving himself over. But I had his right wrist securely locked in my right hand, pinned at the middle of his back. His broad shoulders were pressed firmly up against the stone wall.

  “Jesus,” he said at last, his voice hoarse and gasping. “Kiss me.”

  I did, angling my face up suddenly just as I slid my left hand around his throat. It was tight, but not enough to keep him from turning his head, breaking the kiss he’d demanded a moment before.

  “No.” It wasn’t the sort of no that means, I know I shouldn’t but more please. Just to be crystal clear, he told me, “Stop that.”

  My lips moved up close to his ear. “Make me, big guy. You’re tough, ain’t you? Make me stop if you think you can.” I pushed up against him, crushing him between my form and the wall. My grip constricted his throat, then I could hear it in his voice.

  “I said stop.”

  I ignored him, waiting for the full panic to set in, wondering just how foolishly brave he might be.

  He made a choking sound, a gurgle, an abortive attempt to draw breath. “I don’t like this!”

  I chuckled in his ear. “I know what you like. You spoiled rich kids are all the same.” I caught his earlobe between my teeth and clenched my fist tighter. I dug into the flesh at the back of his neck with my fingertips. His larynx trembled beneath the pad of my thumb. He pushed at me with his left hand. His legs jerked as his shoes scuffed the dirty alleyway. He began to buck, but my feet were planted. I had all the leverage and his good arm rendered useless. He tried to make a fist in my hair. When that didn’t work, he pushed against the side of my head. Failing that, he punched me.

  It was his left arm, and I was too close for him to get a proper swing, but he managed to make the most of it. I suppose he had been aiming for my jaw, but his knuckles landed just above the hinge of it, square between my temple and my right ear. He probably didn’t know it, but that was more effective. And painful.

  The first one only served to make me tighten my grip, but he fed me two more, each rougher than the one preceding it. After the third one landed, I released him, staggering back. I wobbled over to the opposite side of the alley lodging a hand against the bricks to steady myself. Those were good punches. He might be sensitive and artistic like Gig had claimed, but he had an arm.

  “You maniac!” He was bent at the waist, his left hand braced against his thigh as he massaged his throat with his other hand. He didn’t look up even when he told me, “Get the hell away from me!”

  That w
as what I was waiting for.

  I complied, taking the first few steps carefully, then hitting my stride and pulling back my shoulders and straightening my tie. He continued to gasp and sputter, but I figured he’d be fine once he calmed down. I didn’t look back.

  I picked up another bottle of Old Crow on the way home and had polished off half of it before crossing my threshold. I got my jacket off, dropping to my knees in front of my dresser. I pulled out the bottom drawer again, this time all the way so that its contents spilled across the carpet.

  Among the many pieces of junk was a tin box that once had held an assortment of toy soldiers. But the soldiers were gone, replaced by old letters, some postcards, and a few snapshots. Also some dog tags, including mine, though those weren’t the ones I picked up. Catching the chain tightly in my fist, I saw one snapshot had slid clear of the others and lay face up, reflecting the dull light from overhead. The picture showed two young men in uniform—one army, one navy—side by side, with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. The soldier, who looked a lot like me, only happy, had his arm draped across the sailor’s shoulders. They were both grinning at the camera, full of life and the false promises of that sunlit afternoon.

  I crawled over onto the bed, carrying the dog tags and the whiskey and rolled over to face the wall. My head was on the pillow, but when I brought the bottle to my lips, I spilled half of what I’d saved down the side of my face. Well, he never did approve of my drinking anyway. I tossed the Old Crow on the floor and then pushed the soaked pillow after it. Then I brought the dog tags to my lips, not so much kissing them as just reminding myself of how cold and lifeless they were.

  My life is cluttered with perfect metaphors.

  It still hits me like a punch to the middle of my chest to think of him down there, wrapped in all those thousand tons of steel, buried forever with the rest of the cheap beasts, forgotten by everyone but me. Of course, they’re all forgotten except by those who loved them, no matter what folks claim about Armistice Day or Memorial Day. And my greatest fear is that I’ll somehow forget too. Get distracted. Fall in love.

  My only hope is that my plan works, and I succeed enough or fail enough at this stinking profession I’ve chosen for myself that somehow, sometime, someone ends me too and dumps my corpse into the Pacific.

  The ocean is wide and deep. But the same waves crash on Sonoma and Monterey as do on Okinawa and Omaha Beach. The same water weighs heavily on the wreckage of the USS Bismarck Sea, and the shattered remains of the kamikaze plane that put her there. And with a little luck and a sympathetic current, I’ll find my way to the bottom. To the dark and cold and forgotten.

  Then we can be down there together, forever.

  About the Author

  Growing up, Jon Wilson wanted to be a stunt man, a professional wrestler, or a rodeo clown. After breaking his neck in 2001, he decided writing might be safer.

  He was wrong.

  Currently living in California, he is occasionally hard at work on his next novel.

  Declan Colette will return in Every Unworthy Thing.

  Coming Fall 2015

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