The Price of Cash

by Ashley Bartlett

  “They’re called laws. When we call, answer.”

  I decided not to respond. He knew I was going to pick up. “Have a good night, Detective.” I walked down the alley, finger combing my hair back into place.

  He climbed back in his car and took off. I had participated in a few smaller busts already, but this was the first time he cut me loose before we got to the station. Maybe they were starting to trust that I wouldn’t run. It didn’t seem likely. Trust wasn’t high on their list of motivations.

  *****

  Grab a drink with me?

  I sent the text without much thought. Going home felt lonely. It never had before. Now everything there seemed to carry Laurel. It was weighted with the potential for what could have been. Memories we would have made. Instead of hope, I had the lies we’d told each other. Wading through my disappointment every time I opened the front door was wearing on me.

  So I walked to the gay bars that were huddled on one corner as if separating would dilute them. Mercantile Saloon spilled across its patio, over the disused parking lot, so that the noise enveloped the street. Thumping music, contrived laughter, the squeals of straight girls granted access to the sanctum. I rushed past the spectacle and slid into the overt darkness of The Depot. I ignored the corner where Laurel had once waited for me. I had made it so easy for her to seduce me, to entrap me. A quiet, low voice in my head reminded me that Jason was being booked into County and I wasn’t. His freedom for mine.

  Then again, I wasn’t free either.

  I felt heat against my back and breath across my neck. “Hey, stranger, come here often?” Kyra’s voice was low and warm and enticing.

  “Hey.” I turned to let her slide between me and the press of bodies lined at the bar. “You got my text.” I put my hand low on her back. It wasn’t possessive. Intimate, maybe. It felt like a shield. If I was here with someone, I wasn’t here alone. I wasn’t anywhere alone.

  “I was staring at the walls, the ceiling, out the window. Basically, doing everything I could to avoid actually painting.”

  “So I saved you from yourself?”

  “You’re my hero.” Kyra leaned in and kissed my cheek.

  The press of her lips was smooth and soothing. A promise without the weight. She expected nothing, demanded nothing. She stayed close as we tried to get the attention of the bartender. The bare skin of her midriff seemed to radiate heat. She was wearing big boots and slim jeans with a flannel tied below her waist. I liked the brush of cotton against my bare forearm. I liked the casual press of her body against mine. As if we had done this a thousand times before. Which, to be fair, wasn’t inaccurate. I’d known Kyra for years, but I hadn’t seen her in years. She’d come back from Los Angeles midsummer. There was a comfort in fucking an old friend. She understood me in a way that I allowed from very few people. She had known me before all of the walls of adulthood were built.

  We ordered drinks and made our way to the back corner of the building. It was loud. The TVs mounted everywhere were playing the most recent sexually fraught female pop music video. Two women were grinding suggestively against each other. There were no dudes on screen. MTV was dead, but videos were apparently still the progressive frontier.

  “So tell me what you’re working on.”

  That was all it took to launch Kyra. I scooted my bar stool so I could lean against the wall and watch her speak. When she talked about painting, it settled her. Her core went entirely still, but her hands danced. There was a streak of pale green oil paint that stood out in stark contrast to her skin. She started tracing her fingers through the air to sketch the plateau she was working on. She tended to do the same thing when we fucked. My body became an involuntary sketch pad.

  “You’re not understanding a damn thing I’m saying, are you?” Kyra smiled to let me know she wasn’t mad.

  “No. But I’m enjoying watching you,” I said. She shook her head. “You’re all academic and artistic and it’s hot.”

  “Don’t fetishize my livelihood.” Her admonishment was contrived.

  “Then what should I fetishize? All you do is paint and talk about painting.”

  “You sound like my mother.” Kyra’s mouth turned down as she realized what she had said. “No, wait. Not the fetishizing. The painting thing.” Kyra sat up straighter. “There is more to the world than painting.” She drew out her vowels in an affected Persian accent.

  I locked my gaze just over Kyra’s shoulder. “Oh, hello, Mrs. Daneshmandan, what are you doing here?”

  Kyra spun halfway around before she realized. She whirled back and slapped my stomach. “You’re an asshole.”

  “Why would your mother be in a gay bar in Midtown?” I managed to ask through my laughter.

  “I don’t know. You seemed so sincere.” She shook her head. “You suck.”

  “I’ve never even met your mother.”

  “And you never will. Because you’re an asshole.” She dropped her hands to rest on my thigh.

  “I don’t know how I’ll ever recover.” I almost sounded sincere.

  Kyra started drumming her fingertips along the inseam of my jeans. “So Saturday. You’re coming? You got the postcard?”

  I tried to come up with a coherent response. Instead I mumbled nonsense.

  “I’m going to take that as a yes?”

  “No, I mean, yes. Probably not though. I don’t know if I’m available.” This was why I didn’t like to lie. I was terrible at it.

  “Oh, good. That cleared it right up.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just Second Saturday.”

  “An occasion you love. Your favorite part of summer. You never used to miss it.” Each point was punctuated by a tantalizingly brief tap against my leg.

  “I know. My neighbor and I—she’s my best friend, kind of. We always go together. It’s our thing,” I said. Kyra waited. “We missed the last one.” More waiting. “We haven’t spoken in over a month. I don’t know if I can go without her.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “We might be fighting.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No.”

  “Got it. So continuing to not speak is a great move. And you should absolutely skip Second Saturday.” Her hands started their dance again. “Now, there are some people who would suggest talking to this friend, but I think you’re making the right move. You’ve always been super passive, which makes the not talking a highly logical choice.”

  I didn’t think I’d ever heard so much sarcasm packed into so few words. I loved where she was coming from, but I didn’t have the energy to analyze it. “Can we not talk about this?”

  Kyra stopped her rambling long enough to search my face. She nodded once, then leaned forward and kissed me. Her lips were chapped and warm. The thick curls that tumbled into her eyes tickled my brow. I reached up and cupped the back of her head. Her soft hair was buzzed and shaved closer to the scalp than I’d ever dared. She groaned and pulled away. I watched her study me. Her eyes were ringed in dark makeup, her lashes a long, delicate fan.

  “You know I like you, right?” Kyra asked. “I mean, I like this.” She squeezed my thigh. “But I like you. As a person. You’re not bad like you think you are.”

  I forced myself to smile. “I know. You’re wrong and you shouldn’t, but yeah.”

  She shook her head and grinned. “My place?”

  “Yeah.” I took a long drink from the beer I had forgotten and stood.

  Kyra slid her hand into mine and led me out of the bar.

  Chapter Two

  It was just after three when I got home. The streets were finally quieting down. The summer heat tended to inspire revelry, not sleep. Kallen’s truck was at the curb. It looked faintly green in the streetlight. My SUV wasn’t in the driveway. I remembered belatedly that I had driven to the meeting with Jason to prove some point. I couldn’t remember what point, but I sure made it. That was going to be a long walk in the morning. I knew I could ask Laurel for a ride when she cam
e to pick up her truck, but I didn’t want to.

  My porch light was off again. One day I was going to consistently remember to turn it on before I left the house. I climbed the steps and just managed to keep myself from jumping when I saw movement at the far end of the porch. My eyes adjusted and I realized Laurel was asleep on the bench.

  A thick wall ringed the edge of the porch. It was about three feet high. Just enough to build deep shadows. The smooth sheen of Laurel’s hair caught the moonlight, but everything else was in darkness. As my eyes adjusted, I could see her slouch. Feet planted, the arrogant spread of her legs. Her arms were folded protectively over her chest. She had thrown a red-pink chambray button up over her T-shirt, but I was guessing she hadn’t gone home.

  I walked over and nudged her foot with one of mine. “Hey, Laurel.” Nothing. “Detective Kallen,” I said loudly.

  She shot upright, grunted, and glared at me.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  She rubbed her eyes vigorously, then shot her cuff and squinted at her watch. “Oh, good. I was afraid you hadn’t properly fucked her, but five hours seems like plenty of time.”

  “I don’t know how to respond to that.”

  “You’re not denying it.” Kallen carefully arranged the cuff back over her watch.

  I shrugged. “I’m not discussing it. I’m not accountable to you.”

  “You’re accountable to our cover.”

  “I think you’ll find that not even the Sacramento Police Department can regulate who I fuck.” I turned away from her. If she wanted to sleep on the porch, that was her business.

  “You know she’s not even a lesbian, right?” Laurel’s question was quiet, desperate.

  “She’s pan. So what?” As soon as I spoke, I knew I shouldn’t have. Announcing that Kyra was pansexual was clearly an assertion of dominance, a demonstration of Laurel’s ability to gather information. Indulging her wouldn’t get us anywhere.

  “Yeah, but she’s not a lesbian.”

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I spun back to glare at her.

  “Nothing. I’m just letting you know.” Laurel pushed herself farther up the bench. Her posture was still casual, arrogant, but with a hint of the stiffness of a salute in it.

  “What business is it of yours if she’s a lesbian?”

  “It should be yours.” She wouldn’t look at me. Just studied the street.

  “Are you seriously policing her queerness right now?” I couldn’t believe we were having this conversation. I shook my head, but nothing changed. “I don’t know why I asked that. You police everything else. Why not sexuality? What about mine? Am I enough of a lesbian? Or am I tainted now?”

  Laurel finally met my eyes. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Okay, fine. It is.” Her mouth was set in a hard line. “I didn’t mean it though.” She unfolded herself from the bench. “Your life is my business now. Your choices affect me.”

  It was what I wanted. But as soon as she brushed past me and descended the stairs, I no longer wanted it. The door of her truck popped and creaked. I let myself into the house. The air was still, stagnant.

  *****

  I was staring at the ceiling and trying to convince myself to get out of bed when there was a knock at the door. It seemed as good an impetus as any so I rolled out of bed. I was wrestling myself into too tight jeans and stumbling down the hallway when the back door opened.

  “This is stupid. I get it. You’re mad, but I’m not sure what you think I could have done. So I’ve decided that you’re wrong.” Robin nudged the door closed with her foot. She walked past me into the kitchen and set two cups of coffee on the table. She sat and popped the lid off one cup. “Also, it’s Second Saturday and it killed me not to go out last month. I miss you. You’re a jerk and you’re bad at talking and I should probably feel guilty, but I don’t because you’re a jerk.”

  I yanked my hand out of my jeans, buttoned them, and shuffled the rest of the way into the kitchen. I pulled out my own chair and collapsed into it. “You think I’m mad at you?”

  “You don’t call. You don’t come over. Andy said you haven’t contacted her. You can be mad at me, but that’s not cool.”

  “I haven’t even seen Andy.” It was as if she had disappeared. If she was putting that much effort into avoiding me, I wasn’t going to push it. Hell, Robin hadn’t even asked me to keep an eye on Andy. Not that I blamed her. Drug dealer.

  Robin stopped blowing across the surface of her coffee and stared at me. “Andy’s been out of town for three weeks.”

  “Huh?”

  “Three weeks. No Andy. That’s why I’ve been working nights.”

  “You haven’t been avoiding me?”

  “No. You’ve been avoiding me.”

  “I was giving you space. I brought the police into our home. They searched the place. Put up notices and tape.” I waved my hand at the front door. “I hid drug paraphernalia in your closet. I put you and your kid at risk.”

  “Huh.” Robin made a face at her coffee. Then she started laughing.

  “What? Stop it. Why are you laughing?”

  “I thought you were mad that I didn’t stop them from ransacking your place.” She continued laughing. “I have drug paraphernalia in my closet?”

  “In the ceiling. That storage space.” This was all very strange.

  “Oh my God. I told you to put it there, didn’t I?”

  I nodded slowly. “Years ago.”

  “So I’ve got drugs in my closet?” Robin asked. I nodded. “And you’re not pissed that I let the police tear your place apart?” I shook my head. “And you thought Andy was avoiding you?” I nodded. “Oh, Cash. I missed you.” Robin leaned over and pulled me into a hug.

  I had a lot of questions. I decided to ignore all of them and give into the hug. “I’m glad you decided to tell me I’m a jerk.”

  Robin shrugged. “I had a shitty shift last night. On my way home, I stopped for coffee and I didn’t realize until they handed me two cups that I had ordered for you too.”

  “Aww, you did miss me.” I finally grabbed the coffee. It smelled good. Like coffee. “So tell me about the shitty shift.”

  Robin nodded once and grinned at her coffee. She told me about getting peed on and a teenager dying from an overdose and another losing a leg and how someone had changed the soap in the locker room to one that she hated. It was all sad, but it felt less so to hear it shared. She twirled her empty coffee cup until I put my hand over hers to keep her still.

  We were interrupted by the beeping of my cell phone. I dug it out of my pocket and fought a grimace. Reyes. “Sorry. Give me a sec.” I swiped. “Hello.”

  “Cash, it’s Reyes.”

  As if his number wasn’t stored in my phone. “What’s up?”

  There was a swell of noise that sounded like the squad room. “Sorry. Give me a minute.” A door slammed and the rhythmic click of Reyes’s boots echoed off cement stairs. “I’d like to meet you and go over our reports from last night. Are you available this afternoon?” I imagined him leaning against the wall in the stairwell, the ankles of his designer pants hiked up just so.

  “Sure.”

  “Good. Two o’clock at Rick’s Dessert Diner? That early, we should be able to get a private table.”

  “Wait. Me and you? What about Laurel?”

  “Oh.” He cleared his throat. “Her schedule is a beast this week. She asked me to take the meeting.”

  That wasn’t right. I didn’t trust the sudden shift in our routine. I could imagine a thousand reasons, few of them good. But I trusted Reyes. Then again, I’d trusted Laurel Collins. I’d have to watch myself. “Fine. Two o’clock.”

  “Thanks.” Reyes hung up.

  “Sorry.” I set my phone on the table.

  “So how is Laurel?” Robin asked. She smiled knowingly and I realized she didn’t know.

  “Shit.”

  “What?”

&
nbsp; “I…we haven’t talked.”

  “Oh no. Did you break up? Sorry. I thought you said her name. She’s been around a fair bit.” Robin resumed spinning her cup. I let her.

  “No. I mean, yes. You and I haven’t talked. Laurel is a cop.”

  Robin stopped twirling. She pulled her hands back to her lap carefully. The kitchen felt silent and slow. After a minute, she spoke. “She was watching you.”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded once with finality. “Can you talk about it?”

  “I’m not supposed to. Legally.” That seemed like a good point to clarify. “Then again, I’m not supposed to have drugs stored in your closet—which I need, by the way—so I don’t mind telling you. Only if you want to know.”

  “It seems like something I should know.”

  I nodded. “Laurel’s real name is Laurel Kallen, not Collins.” Robin blinked rapidly. Like she was struggling to comprehend the incomprehensible. “She’s a detective with Sacramento PD. She and her partner, Lucas Reyes, liaise with the local FBI office on narcotics cases. They recruited her because she’s very talented at undercover work.” I stopped explaining when I realized that Robin was crying. “Whoa, hey. We’re past that. It is what it is.”

  “But she made you fall—She started a relationship with you. That’s unforgivable. Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.” She put her hand on my forearm.

  I shrugged. Then nodded. Then I didn’t know what to do so I shrugged again. “She did her job. I did mine. She was better.”

  “But that’s…” Robin searched my eyes. As if I knew the word. “Immoral.”

  “I’m a drug dealer.”

  “Illegal.”

  “Drug. Dealer.” I slowed it down.

  “Fucked up.”

  “Okay, yeah.” That one I could get behind.

  “You breaking the rules doesn’t give her the right to do so.”

  I appreciated her trying, but I had been wrestling that angel for a month. “No, I think the law does that.”

  “So?” Robin huffed. She was doing a lot of moral stretching to make me feel better. I loved her for that.