by Gregory Ashe
“Yeah, I can tell. You’re working it really hard. This is just, what, a siesta?”
Without an answer, Hazard settled for giving Nico a cold stare.
Nico met the stare for a moment and then dropped his eyes. He paced back and forth, his boots squeaking, one hand toying with a hole in his shirt. As his fingers twisted the threadbare cotton, he exposed hints of satin skin and muscle. Hazard dropped onto the couch and waited. Ten seconds passed. The boots squeaked louder and faster. Twenty seconds. Nico twisted harder at the t-shirt. The cotton stuttered a long, ripping noise.
“Let’s go to New York,” Nico said, planting himself in front of Hazard. “Let’s get out of here for the break. No, hold on. Just listen. I’m on break until the fifteenth. You’ve got vacation. You haven’t used any of it, so I know you’ve got it. I’ll buy the tickets. I’ve got some money left over from those summer jobs. Maybe I’ll pick up a photo shoot while I’m in the city. There’s this Fruit of the Loom job that my agent keeps floating.” Nico smiled, and it trembled like a drop of water about to fall. So full of hope, that damn smile. And so full of fear. “You’ve never seen me on a shoot. You’ve never seen any of my pictures. You’ve never asked.”
Hazard laced his fingers together. Best thing to do was wait. Wait and let him get it all out. That’s what Hazard had done with Alec. That’s what Hazard had done with Billy. Yeah, a traitorous voice said. Yeah, and look how that turned out.
“Well?” Nico said.
“What?”
“New York. A vacation.”
“I’m working a case.”
“No. You’re—you’re doing something, and I don’t know what you’re doing, but it’s not a case.”
“You know I’m working a case.”
“Don’t lie to me.” The words emerged as a shout, deeper and louder than any tone that Nico had used with Hazard before. “Jesus, just don’t lie, ok? Don’t make me feel like even more of an idiot.”
Hazard had gone still. The hairs on his arms, the hairs on his chest, the hairs on the back of his neck were standing up, like something out of a bad horror film. Alec had yelled this way. Billy had—no, Billy hadn’t yelled. Billy had other ways. Mikey Grimes had yelled this way. Somers had yelled this way, the day he shoved Hazard down a flight of stairs. That’s what faggots get.
Something of Hazard’s feelings must have shown in his face because Nico bit his lip and said, “Damn,” and then, of all things, he went down on his knees and grabbed Hazard’s hands, ignoring Hazard’s initial effort to pull away. “I’m sorry. I feel like—I don’t know what I feel like. I’ve never done this before. This has never happened before. I shouldn’t have yelled, but I don’t understand.”
“What?”
“Huh?”
“What don’t you understand?”
“This. You. John-Henry. The sneaking around. The—” He had been about to say lying. Hazard could read it from a mile off. Instead, though, he said, “The times you just disappear.”
“I’m working a case. I have a job, remember? Not all of us get to spend the summer trying on jockstraps and cash those big checks all year round.” Hazard twisted his hands free. “And Somers is my partner. I know you don’t like him. For all I care, you can hate him. I have a job, he’s my partner, and that’s the end of it.”
Nico grimaced, and he latched onto Hazard’s hands again. Looking up at Hazard, looking up through thick lashes, he shook his head. “All right. You tell me you’re working a case. You tell me I’m, I don’t know, crazy. Jealous. Whatever you want, you call me that, and I’ll nod and I’ll own up to it. I’ll wear a fucking sign in the middle of the street that says I’m a jealous bitch if that’s what you want. But you’ve got to tell me why, when I ran into Albert at the grocery store today, he told me there’s no case. What am I supposed to think when you’re having lunch with John-Henry, when Marcus sees the two of you laughing and drinking tequila and—”
“Lender said what?” Shock forced Hazard into motion. He stood up, pushing Nico away, and strode towards the kitchen.
Nico scrambled to his feet, flushing, and followed. “There’s no case. The shooter was killed last night while trying to escape.”
“That piece of shit.”
“Is he telling the truth?”
“That fucking piece of shit.”
With surprising strength, Nico grabbed Hazard’s shoulder and spun him. “Is he telling the truth?”
A growl was building inside Hazard. He wanted to knock aside Nico’s hand. He wanted to shove—
—this child, this baby, this infant—
—Nico out of the way. He wanted to drive to Albert Lender’s house and punch him so hard that the thick-framed glasses were permanently embedded in Lender’s skull.
Instead, though, he managed to draw a breath. “That’s not how it is.”
“So the shooter wasn’t killed last night?”
Hazard hesitated. He wasn’t smooth enough. He wasn’t fast enough. He was too used to delivering brutal truths; he had always preferred the brutality of truth, even from a young age. Keen analysis, insight, and effective delivery were a far more powerful combination than slick talking, he had found. And now, when he needed a bit of smooth, it failed him.
“Mother of God,” Nico said. “He was. He was killed last night. And you’re trying to lie about it.”
“I haven’t even said a damn word. Yes, he was shot last night. And Lender is the one who shot him.”
“So he was telling the truth.”
“No.”
“You just told me: the shooter is dead. The man who killed that girl, he’s dead. So what have you been doing?”
“Just because he’s dead doesn’t mean there’s no case.”
“That’s exactly what it means. No, Emery, I get to finish what I’m saying. This is exactly what Lender told me was happening. You’re—I don’t know, you’re obsessed with him. With John-Henry. And now you’re using this, the shooting, all of it, as a way to spend more time with him. As a way to make him need you.”
Shaking his head, Hazard flung open the refrigerator. He grabbed a beer, twisted off the top, and spun the cap into the sink. After a long drink, he wiped his mouth and let out a defeated laugh. “This is a joke. Yeah. It’s a fucking joke. You think you have any idea what you’re talking about? You think because a crooked cop comes up to you in the grocery store and plants this shit in your head, you think you know what’s going on? You’re the one paying sixty thousand dollars a year for a master’s degree in theology. Why don’t you put those critical thinking skills to work? Did you ever think that Lender might be lying? Did you think that maybe I know something you don’t? Did you ever think to trust me?”
Nico swallowed. Under the burnt gold of his skin, he had gone pale, and he swallowed now, but he didn’t break eye contact.
“You know what the worst part of this is?” Hazard said, taking another drink of the beer, wanting to spit it out because everything tasted like something he’d sicked up, everything: the air, his tongue, the beer. “It’s not that you believed Lender over me. It’s not that you don’t trust me. It’s that you’re jealous. It’s that you made him right. You’re jealous of Somers, and all those times I defended you, all those times I told him he was crazy for thinking you were jealous, I was wrong. You made him right. You made him fucking right.” Hazard shook his head in disgust.
“I’m jealous,” Nico said. “I’m the one’s jealous. That’s what he said. Me. I’m the one.”
“You don’t know anything about me,” Hazard said. “Not if you think something could happen between me and him.”
“Maybe I am. Maybe I am jealous. I don’t—I can’t think straight. Not when I’m feeling like this. Maybe I really am. Because you look at him, and you actually see him. You talk to him, and you’re really talking to him. You go out with him. You—”
“That’s what this is about? You want to go out more?”
“Then what are you saying?”
“I’m saying I have no idea why you’re dating me when you’re obviously in love with him.”
The silence that followed roared like radio static. Somewhere outside, somewhere on Market Street, a horn was blaring, and the sound was faded and small and flat. The beer curdled on Hazard’s tongue. He’d throw it up; he needed to throw it up, all of it, and it was going to come up. But mostly, his brain felt stretched towards the closed bedroom door, towards the man behind it, and Hazard was waiting, listening, hoping.
But Somers didn’t open the door. Just more of that staticky silence, like someone had snapped the tuner.
“That’s what I’m saying.” Nico was breathing raggedly. Those dark eyes, like the dark of butterfly wings, were full of tears. “That’s what I want to know. Why? Why are we doing this?”
“We were fine,” Hazard said. He set the beer down—sloppy, sloppy—and it tumbled into the sink. Glass cracked. “Last night, for hell’s sake, we were fine. We were having a nice time.”
“We weren’t fine. Maybe we haven’t ever been fine. I don’t know if you’re deluded. I don’t know if you don’t even know the truth yourself. I don’t know if you’re just lonely. But you know what? You still haven’t told me. You still can’t tell me why.”
“Fine. I’ll tell you why. I’m dating you because—”
Hazard’s phone buzzed. He slapped his hand on his pocket, drew out the phone, and stared at the screen. Swinney’s name flashed. He looked up at Nico. There wasn’t any right way to say this, and once again, Hazard searched for something smooth and came up with all the harsh, broken things he was used to saying.
“You know what?” Nico brushed at his eyes, and he was trying his hardest to sound normal, he was trying so hard that it hurt Hazard, hurt at some fundamental level that he wasn’t even aware of. “You should take that.”
“It’s work.”
“I know it’s work.”
Nico grabbed his parka and headed for the door. The hurt inside Hazard, the pain, had grown so huge that his hands felt like balloons. He gripped the edge of the sink, and he felt a flash of pain. Not from the broken beer glass. It was the old cut on his hand, the still-healing cut. It hurt like hell as he clutched at the sink, and the shock was enough for Hazard to draw a breath and thumb at the call.
“What is it?” Hazard asked. Nico didn’t look back. Nico didn’t slow down. Nico pulled the door shut. Not like a baby. Not like a child. No tantrums. Not like a kid at all. Just pulled it shut, and then he was gone.
Swinney’s voice sounded like a bald tire, and it took Hazard a moment to realize she’d been crying.
“I need to talk about what happened last night.”
SOMERS PUT HIMSELF AT ABOUT SIXTY PERCENT. He’d slept some, maybe three-quarters of an hour, until the yelling had started. The sleep had helped. The worst of the booze was running out of him, and in its place had come a throbbing headache, like his skull had turned to glass and was trying to shiver itself apart. He needed water. No. He needed another drink. And then another. And then another, until someone or something came along and put him to bed.
That was the easy way out. That was an old, well-trodden road for John-Henry Somerset. When things started hurting too bad, when things got hard, when the coin didn’t flip heads-up, just walk away. Leave. Or get so drunk you were all the way out of your head.
But the yelling, this time, the yelling made him stop and listen and lie on his bed, his skin prickling like a draft was running over him. Hazard sounded raw. Furious. And wounded. All the years Somers had known him, all the torment he had inflicted on Hazard in school, and he’d never heard that kind of vulnerability in Hazard’s voice. It was Nico, of course. It was that selfish, spoiled, primping drama queen. It was just like Nico, just like that immature piece of ass to do this to Hazard, to completely take the man apart.
But it wasn’t just Nico’s fault. That was too easy. That was too simple. Because it was Hazard’s fault too. It was the big man’s fault for—
—daring to love someone else—
—hooking up with an infant. With a baby. With a child who had no sense of the world, no sense of who Emery Hazard was, the kind of man he was, no sense of how lucky he was to be with Hazard.
And a very small part of Somers, a part of himself that he hated and buried under half-vocalized justifications and explanations, that small part of him hated the fact that Nico had managed to hurt Hazard in a way that Somers never could. Even as the thought stirred in its dark hole, Somers heaped more dirt on it. But it was there: the root of what had driven him to bully the skinny boy when they had been teenagers, the mixture of fear and desire that Somers couldn’t control, couldn’t escape, couldn’t face in the daylight.
And then the shouting stopped. Five minutes passed. The prickling on Somers’s skin dried up, and he felt mostly the headache and the sick guiltiness of eavesdropping—and, too, of the dark hope that maybe now, maybe this time, Hazard would end things with Nico. Maybe it would be over.
Fuck that, Somers told himself. And fuck you for being such a miserable, selfish fuck. You’re not going to date Hazard. He’s not interested in you—no matter what that baby he’s dating thinks—and he’s made that clear plenty of times. He made it clear at Windsor, didn’t he? You practically threw yourself at him, and he didn’t want you. So let him go. Let him have someone, at least. Someone who will make him happy. And a dark voice added, let him have someone who’s not Nico.
The knock jolted Somers out of his recriminations. A moment later, Hazard’s gruff, “Get up,” followed.
Since Hazard had moved into the apartment, Somers had found himself acquiring furniture—not buying it, but just having it appear. Hazard’s doing, he was sure, although, his partner never said anything about it. Somers’s bedroom had transformed over the last two months. Instead of the mattress on the floor, there was an actual bed. Instead of the black garbage bags full of clothes, there were hangers in the closet. Instead of—well, instead of the emptiness, there was a dresser, a chair, a mirror.
In front of the mirror, Somers paused, forking two fingers through his hair, mussed but not too mussed. He adjusted his undershirt, sliding the scoop neck lower to expose the ink on his collarbone. Hazard liked that ink, Somers knew. Somers didn’t care, of course. Somers wasn’t telling himself, be normal, be casual. He wasn’t telling himself that. He was a grown man. He didn’t care, didn’t give a shit about what Hazard liked or thought or did. But he still couldn’t get the thought out of his head. Be normal.
When he opened the door, Hazard stood near the entryway, arms crossed over his chest, the muscles in his jaw tight, practically rippling with force.
“We’ve got to go. Get dressed.”
“What’s going on?” Act normal. A little sleepy because you just got up. No yawn, that’s too obvious. But maybe—he scratched under one arm. Maybe something like that. “Was someone here?”
“Get your clothes on. Swinney called. She wants to talk about what happened to Stillwell.”
Somers nodded, collecting a fresh shirt and clean pants from the closet and tugging them on. Through the open door, he called, “I thought I heard Nico.”
No response.
Somers dragged on socks, shoved his feet into loafers, and joined his partner near the door. The headache had really gotten its teeth, and Somers swiped Tylenol from the cabinet and chugged a bottle of water. Hazard stood where he’d been standing five minutes before. He didn’t look like he’d moved. He didn’t look like he’d so much as breathed.
“Well?” Somers said.
“What?”
“Was Nico here?”
“If you want to say something, just say it, Somers. Don’t piss all over the place.” Hazard stormed into the hallway.
Following, Somers shrugged into his jacket. “It’s just
a question.”
They met Swinney in, of all places, Smithfield. Hazard drove, and the VW’s whine burrowed into Somers’s head, taking up residence with the headache. Hazard was all stiff, angry silence. Somers didn’t bother trying to get anything out of his partner; he settled for keeping himself from tossing up everything in his stomach.
Driving them west, Hazard passed through most of Smithfield. The houses decayed steadily: neat, new buildings giving way to older, skinny brick structures, brick giving way to timber and scrap, windows giving way to broken, gaping sickles of glass. They passed the Haverford, where Wayne Stillwell had lived, and the broken beer bottles still poked out of the snow like the fangs of something of some beast from a very tacky ice age.
The next block was composed of a single building subdivided into storefronts. Many were closed—the glass broken or simply gone, and plywood that bled spray paint in a dozen different places. A wings-and-seafood joint occupied one of the remaining storefronts, though, its neon sign flashing something that Somers hoped was a shrimp. And a dollar store occupied another. There was a payday loan office, a Church of the Three-Day Nazarene, a beauty salon named Mystique with a smaller sign advertising wigs made from human hair, and a real estate agent: Berta Gutierrez, Into Your Home, Into Your Heart. What there was not, though, was any sign of Swinney.
“What the hell was she thinking?” Hazard muttered as he shifted the VW into park.
“She was thinking nobody from the department would be out here.” Somers massaged his head, but he needed more force behind the movement. Hazard had big hands. Strong hands. If Somers asked him, if he asked him nicely, Hazard might—
“This is stupid.” Hazard grabbed the keys. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Swinney chose this place for a reason. She wants to talk about Lender, and she’s not going to do it where Murray or Carmichael or Orear are going to walk in on us.”
“She chose a spot where she can hollow out our heads with a 9mm and nobody will ask her to sweep up afterward.”