Unfiltered & Uncensored

by Payge Galvin

  Max glanced down too. The black-with-red-hearts boxers had been a gift from Claire. What was he thinking, wearing them today?

  How had his life gotten so fucked up that he was wearing them here with Paula instead of wearing them at home with Claire where he belonged?

  “Who’s the lucky girl who gets to wake up to those?” Paula teased.

  Max didn’t answer. Just like he didn’t tell her the AC was turned up a bit high for a guy in black socks and boxers. Goosebumps rose on Max’s bare arms and legs as Paula typed away, stopping every few keystrokes to look suggestively over the top of the screen. Apparently she was a touch typist.

  “Next,” she said.

  Max gave her the next number and tossed her a single sock.

  Paula laughed and laughed as she twirled the sock on her finger. “Oh, come now. One sock isn’t a piece of clothing. No one wears just one sock.”

  Max gave her a you-can’t-be-serious look.

  “Guess you’re not an English major after all.” Paula’s eyes traced their way down Max’s chest and past his heart-covered boxers to his one still-clad foot. “They call it a pair of socks for a reason.”

  Max didn’t move, and finally Paula said, “You want this info or not?”

  Max still had another number to go after this one. He told himself it was no big deal. What did he care whether Paula saw him with his boxers or without them?

  The cold AC shivered against Max’s legs. There was no harm bargaining, right? “What, the view’s not good enough for you? Are you really going to haggle over a single sock?”

  “Oh, I’m not. But you are.” Paula’s amused look took in the lines of his bare skin. “You looked pretty desperate when you came in her sweetie. We both know you’re gonna do whatever it takes.”

  Whatever it takes.

  Max had told himself time and time again he’d do whatever it took to get his story: out a senator’s son, get a jock on a sex scandal, humiliate an up-and-coming singer in front of the guy’s girlfriend. Max had gotten halfway to convincing himself he was willing to seduce his ex-girlfriend, too. He’d told himself time and again it didn’t matter, so long as it all worked out in the end, with Claire in his arms and his career on its track.

  Standing there, half-barefooted in Claire’s stupid hearts-and-arrows boxers, something inside Max snapped.

  What the fuck was he doing?

  Whatever it takes.

  That was the kind of crap thinking that led to someone deciding it was okay to take out Douglas Coughlan with a cup of poisoned coffee. It was the sort of thinking that led twelve someones to decide it was okay to burn a body and hide a car and take all the money Douglas Coughlan left behind, just so long as it meant they didn’t get caught.

  Whatever it takes.

  What made Max think Claire was even the sort of woman who would want a guy who would do whatever it took to impress her? She hadn’t acted like that woman when she thought Max knew something about the break-in. Hell, she’d never ever acted like that woman. Max knew her better than this.

  And even if he didn’t—he had some fucking pride. How you did a thing mattered as much as what you did.

  Max grabbed his sock from where it had landed on Paula’s desk and pulled it back on. If there was one thing he knew from a history of changing majors, it was that it was too late to back out. He grabbed his pants from the desk and pulled those on, too.

  Paula made bemused tut-tutting sounds. “Did I say you could get dressed yet? We’re not done here.”

  “Actually,” Max said, “we are.” He pulled on his shirt.

  Paula pulled the flash drive from her computer and dangled it in front of him. “You’re so close ... you’re not really going to let this go, are you? One more bit of unfinished business?”

  Some business was worth leaving unfinished, Max thought as he buttoned the shirt up. It wasn’t always wrong to change majors, careers, life plans. It was only wrong not to know which things you needed to keep alongside all the things you chose to give up.

  Paula shrugged as Max shoved his feet into his shoes. “You do realize I could bring the authorities down on your sorry ass for even having asked me to do this?” she asked lightly.

  “And when they find out you were perfectly willing to do so?” Max said with a smirk. “How do you think that’ll go over?” He grabbed the tie and belt from her shoulders and walked away.

  Just like that, Max wasn’t the guy who would do anything after all.

  The hot desert air was a relief after Paula’s overcooled office. Max put on his belt as he walked, and he shoved the tie in his pocket. He was done. Not with the story—he wasn’t giving up on that, and not only because he’d promised Jess—but on imagining he was willing to pay any price to get it. He’d find some other way to get this thing done.

  But first, he realized, he had another bit of unfinished business to tend to. As soon as he got home, he was calling Claire and telling her everything, starting with that night in The Coffee Cave and going all the way until now.

  A sick feeling settled in the pit of his stomach as he crossed campus and headed for his apartment. No way would Claire want anything to do with him, once she knew what he’d been messed up with and how long he’d kept it from her. But at least she’d know all that he knew about the break-in. Was knowing that all she really wanted from him, after all?

  It had sure looked that way, but deep down Max didn’t believe it. That wasn’t the Claire he knew. Then again, he wasn’t exactly the Max she knew anymore either, was she?

  In his apartment, Max grabbed a beer, sat down, and quietly downed it, gathering his courage. One deep breath. Two.

  And then the phone startled him by ringing. Claire? Max looked down.

  Not Claire. It was a number he didn’t know—not Rio Verde, but somewhere in Arizona. Frowning, he answered. “Hello?”

  “Is this Max?” the male voice on the other end asked.

  Max stiffened, wondering if somehow the intruder had gotten his number. “Who wants to know?” he asked warily.

  “This is Joseph Cunningham, IV. And with the way you’ve been leaving messages at my father’s office for me all summer, you’d better believe I want to know.”

  Chapter 14

  Max

  Max stared at the phone. “Is this some sort of joke?” He’d given up on the senator’s brat ever calling him back. He wasn’t even sure he needed him to anymore, now that Jess had said this was an inside job and Max’s focus had shifted away from those there the night of the shooting.

  “It’s about the photo,” Joe said without preamble.

  The photo that, in another lifetime, Max had thought would make his career. “Don’t worry,” he said, meaning it, “I’m not going to publish it.” If Senator Cunningham’s kid wanted a good screw, he was as entitled to it as the rest of them, as entitled as Blake was to whoever he was hiding in his apartment and Jess was to her protective bodybuilder boyfriend. Let them all have fun. However Max made his career, it wouldn’t be by outing someone else seeking out a warm body to get through this life. He was done with that, too. How he did this thing mattered in more ways than one.

  “I’ll pay you,” Joe said.

  “I already told you ...” Max began.

  “No,” Joe cut in, impatient. “I’ll pay you to run it. I need you to ruin me. Whatever it takes.”

  “Excuse me?” Max stared at the phone. How drunk was he? He stared at his beer can, reminding himself that after one beer he shouldn’t be drunk at all. Which left the obvious question: how drunk was Joe?

  “It’s kind of a complicated story,” Joe said, sounding uncomfortable. “I’d as soon skip the details if it’s okay with you.”

  Max rubbed his temples. This wasn’t making any sense. “I’m done trashing reputations, okay?” Or trying to trash them—he’d never actually succeeded in doing so, anyway. For the first time, Max was good with that.

  But getting The Coffee Cave killer—that was something actua
lly worth doing. And Max knew now that Joe had nothing to do with that death.

  “Listen, I ...” Max heard Joe draw a deep breath. “It’s not about my reputation. It’s about trying to keep someone else’s reputation from getting trashed. I need a diversion, and this is the best I could come up with. Simple as that. It’s all for a good cause, I swear.”

  Max started laughing then, and once he started he couldn’t seem to stop. “What, is this about a girl? I don’t think releasing that picture is going to earn you any points with Whitney, dude.”

  “Who?” Joe said, but before Max could ask if he’d really already forgotten her name, he pressed on, “This isn’t about Whitney. It’s about ...” Joe’s voice trailed off pathetically.

  Max stopped laughing. Good God, Joe sounded like he was actually, really and truly, in love. Not with Whitney, but with someone.

  Happens to the best of us, Max thought, as another voice in his head pointed out what he’d been ignoring until now: Senator Cunningham’s son was on the phone, and he was willing to do anything for a favor.

  Max actually did still need a favor.

  “Okay, listen,” Max said, thinking fast about the best way to do this. “I’m not going to publish that photo, so quit asking. But if you want to publish it yourself, or see that it gets published, that’s your business. I’ll send you the picture. Only there’s something I need first.”

  “What?” Joe said, sounding wary now.

  “I need a set of fingerprints IDed.”

  ‡

  They met in person, because if Max had learned anything from Paula, it was that there were some conversations you shouldn’t trust to the phone. They met in a dark corner of a garden variety Starbucks, and Max handed off his set of prints. Just one set, for the guy in the apartment, because handing in Dillon’s prints seemed like a shitty thing to do now, and besides, surely the show had already done a background check on him, just like they had on that woman who got kicked off for a few topless photos she’d taken ages ago.

  Max gave Joe the intruder’s prints, along with a flash drive containing all the photos he had of Joe and Whitney, and Max promised that once Joe had the prints IDed, he would remove every last backup he had of those photos.

  Max put off calling Claire a few more days, telling himself that he was so close to solving this thing now he might as well wait, and also telling himself that he definitely wasn’t losing his nerve or delaying the inevitable. Max and Joe met again, at a different Starbucks, and Joe gave Max a plain white envelope. “And now,” the senator’s son said, repeating words that had been spoken in the Cave the night this all began, “We really don’t talk to each other ever again.”

  “Deal,” Max agreed.

  ‡

  Max took the envelope back to his apartment before he looked inside. No beer this time: he wanted to be cold sober for this. He opened the envelope.

  The fingerprints belonged to one Jason Chamberlain, who had a series of petty drug offenses going back pretty much to the year he’d come of age. Just the sort of record you’d expect for a small-time drug dealer.

  The only problem was, there was no Jason Chamberlain associated with The Coffee Cave.

  But no way was Max giving up now. As the night wore on he made himself a strong pot of coffee and began a new round of public records searches. Aside from having been born and racked up a criminal record, Jason Chamberlain might as well have not existed at all.

  Max worked backwards, trying to link each of the Coffee Cave staff and investors back to Jason Chamberlain instead.

  That turned up something interesting. The Cave’s owner, one Jason Haley, didn’t actually exist. Or rather, Jason Haley wasn’t a person, but a business entity. A DBA—doing business as—for one Coffee Cave Industries. There were a few other DBAs and LLCs between Coffee Cave Industries and, at the end of it all, Jason Chamberlain.

  Hah! That was the link Max needed. Jason Haley was Jason Chamberlain’s business front.

  Unlike Chamberlain, on paper Haley was a respected and respectable citizen. Property tax records for a house bought with cash. Wife and infant kid. The occasional community service award.

  An inside job, indeed. It was Jason Haley, owner of the Cave, who Max needed to catch.

  A few photos of this guy making a deal, combined with the photos from the webcam and the analysis of the coffee cup, and Max would have ... well, maybe not the stuff of a story. But something he could bring to the local Rio Verde police, who could bring Jason in. This really was about doing the right thing now, and not just about his story.

  And once he was done, he could finally tell Claire ...

  Screw that. This was about doing the right thing in more ways than one. Max picked up the phone and called Claire, not worrying about how late it was.

  Her voice mail said she was out of town for a work conference. Max almost hung up, but instead he took a deep breath and found words. “We need to talk,” he began, awkwardly, repeating Claire’s words to him a few weeks ago. “I can ... well, I don’t know if I can explain, but I’m sure as hell going to try.” His voice dropped, and he drew the phone closer. “I love you, Claire. Whatever else happens, whatever you decide when I’m through explaining, that isn’t ever going to change. Call me, okay?”

  When she called, he’d do whatever he could to win her back. He might not succeed, but college majors weren’t the only thing he was done giving up on, after all.

  ‡

  Now that Max knew what he was looking for, it took only a bit more online research—and a few uneasy-making drives by Jason Haley/Chamberlain’s house, during which he took extra-long routes home to make sure he wasn’t followed—to figure out Jason’s routine.

  It turned out Max hadn’t been stalking The Coffee Cave late enough. Three a.m., when all the coffee drinkers were long gone, was when the Cave’s real business began.

  Which was how only two nights later Max found himself waiting hidden among the mesquites behind The Coffee Cave for Jason to show, his phone camera on, his flash definitively off. There were a lot of mesquites in the Cave’s back parking lot, which bordered a larger abandoned lot that gave way to open desert. It was the perfect place to make a drug deal, really.

  Max watched as a shadowy figure exited the Cave’s back door—just like it had the past couple nights, when Max had still been in research mode—and walked, swaggering, toward the edge of the lot.

  Max turned his phone’s recorder on too and waited. A cool wind rustled the mesquites, and a thorny branch snagged on his shirt. He removed it, forcing himself to stay quiet.

  The man walked past the pavement and into the open desert, but not before Max caught a glimpse of him in a streetlamp: a compact weasel of a man with lank dark hair, just like the guy in the video.

  A second figure moved toward the first. Max’s heart pounded as he glanced at his phone, making sure the recorder really was on, then quickly doused the light. He focused on the second figure, wondering who was out at this hour to make a deal with Jason Haley/Chamberlain tonight. The figure moved past the streetlight as Max watched.

  He caught his breath, and his hands, holding the phone, began to shake.

  It was Claire.

  Claire?

  Oh, hell no.

  No wonder Claire had been so interested in the guy on that video. No wonder she’d been acting so weird in general.

  He would have sworn Claire, of all people, wasn’t a user. Even now, even knowing Claire had been keeping things from him, Max couldn’t quite believe it.

  But it was worse than that. If Claire was here, now, she was one of Jason’s clients.

  Chapter 15

  Claire

  This was it.

  Claire waited in the dark behind The Coffee Cave, the bug securely planted in her collar and a significant amount of cash planted in her pocket. She just had to get Jason Chamberlain to say the right things, and then her colleagues, who could hear every word the bug recorded, would come from where they w
aited just a few blocks away. Together they’d bring this bastard down. Tonight.

  A desert breeze brushed Claire’s skin, and anticipation rose within her. Chamberlain was linked to at least three deaths now, more likely four if you counted the missing person. Time to do this thing.

  And later, there’d be time to find out who Chamberlain was working for, too.

  Claire watched, not moving, as Chamberlain slowly crossed the parking lot to the open desert beyond. It had taken half a dozen smaller deals to lead Claire to him.

  The wind picked up. Claire crossed the parking lot too, briefly crossing the light of a flickering streetlamp to meet Chamberlain where he stood.

  For a moment they stared at each other in the dark. Chamberlain’s eyes made their way down Claire’s body, lingering on every curve. “You didn’t tell me you were a chick.” He sounded amused.

  Scumbag. Claire kept smiling, as if she actually liked it when people like him noticed all the wrong things about people like her. “Yeah, well, I hear this is an equal opportunity business. No glass ceilings, plenty of room for ... advancement.” She smiled meaningfully at the last word, and Jason grinned. “So, what do you have for me?” she asked.

  “Just a few small ... deliveries,” Chamberlain said. “You pay me, they pay you.” In the silence that followed that statement, Claire heard something, a sound like caught breath out among the mesquites.

  Chamberlain looked up, and Claire knew he heard it too, heard it and wasn’t expecting it.

  “Damn wind,” Claire said lightly. Whoever was out there, she needed to keep Chamberlain’s attention on her long enough to get him talking. “How small?” she asked him.

  Chamberlain’s shoulders tensed. He was on edge, watchful. Claire knew how that felt. She was watchful too—but also better at not letting it show.

  “Just a few rocks of crack,” Chamberlain said slowly. “Something to prove yourself with.” He moved toward Claire, closing the small space between them. “‘Course, we could speed up the whole proving-yourself-to-me process if you’re eager to move on to something ... bigger.” He trailed one hand down her neck to her chest as the other moved to her hair.