Murder House

by Jordan Castillo Price

  I was flipping through the phone book, trying to figure out where one even went to buy a garage of their own, when Jacob came through the front door. And while I didn’t technically need to wear the cheaters I’d bought for him, they did make that tiny print in the yellow pages a heck of a lot sharper. “So, this is a relief,” I said. “All I had to do was put on a stupid outfit and act like a civilian house hunter for an afternoon.” A small price to pay for the clearance upgrade I’d have once paperwork time rolled around tomorrow.

  Jacob hung back in the doorway and stared.

  I shifted my attention to him. “What?”

  “You’ve got the start of a beard. And your hair…. I just didn’t realize how…different you looked.”

  He didn’t make like it was a bad thing, either. I could practically see the wheels turning.

  I’m sure most people fantasize about getting some strange. Not me—I hate that whole cycle of encountering someone new, hooking up, then inevitably figuring out we were both pretty disappointed. But hardcore serial monogamists like Jacob? I could see the appeal for people who didn’t generally do anonymous. “Want me to grab some takeout from around the corner and ‘deliver’ it?”

  He quelled a smile, not very successfully, and held up a bag. “I’ve got your order right here, sir. That’ll be $18.95.”

  Nice.

  I patted down my pockets. “Damn. Forgot to stop at the ATM. You sure we can’t come to some sort of arrangement?”

  “My boss will really chew me out if I come back empty-handed.”

  “Maybe so—but it’ll take the sting out of it if I chew you out first.”

  Stripping one another down was something we’d done more times than we could count. He eased the takeout onto the sideboard with a lot more care than an actual delivery man would bother to use. I should know—the tomato stain on the welcome mat at my old apartment had been a constant reminder. Jacob and I shucked off each other’s clothes, but not too forcefully. I was well aware of how much his shirts cost. And he knew my Wranglers were teetering at the point between comfy and disintegrating. You can make a pretty big show out of tugging and grabbing, though, especially when you punctuate all the frantic yanks with sloppy kisses. Way more kissing than I would’ve done with a stranger, for sure. But we weren’t exactly aiming for authenticity.

  I took off the reading glasses so he could pull my T-shirt over my head, but when I set them aside, he shoved them into my hand again. I slipped them back on, smirking. What would I notice, if I were seeing him for the first time? Hard to pick just one thing, but I traced the furry contours of his bare chest as if the lay of the land was entirely foreign. Kisses there, too, with his chest hair ruffling my fledgling beard.

  I slipped a hand between his legs. Rock hard. Damn, I loved that, how obvious it was he was into me—even if I was, ostensibly, somebody else. “Where?” I murmured against his nipple.

  “Coffee table.”

  I hoped it could take the strain. Even if it couldn’t, though, it was his call; he was more attached to the thing than I was. I grabbed some lube out of the downstairs bathroom while he stashed the remotes out of harm’s way. Hardly spontaneous, but spontaneity is overrated. When we finally got down to clambering around on the coffee table, though, it was an awkward height. I tried to do him missionary, but I didn’t have the leverage. And doggy style might’ve been achievable, but what was the point, if he couldn’t see the beard and glasses while I nailed him? Eventually I flipped him onto his back, slicked his cock, and climbed on.

  “This works,” he said breathlessly. “Right?”

  “Maybe, but it totally kills the punchline I wanted to deliver—here’s your tip.”

  A thrust of his hips, and I didn’t much care about the punchline anymore. I groaned as he pushed in, just a smidge too big…in other words, perfect. That edge of pain brought everything into sharp focus when we fucked.

  I knew him. We knew each other. A pair of cheap drugstore glasses and a few days’ stubble didn’t change a thing. Maybe that’s why it felt safe enough to do what we were doing, even if we did sound like a couple of stilted porn actors when we spoke in character.

  “I hope you remembered the sauce,” I managed to huff out while he pummeled me. “Last time there wasn’t any sauce.”

  “Oh, I’ll give you sauce, all right.”

  Once I peaked—and shot all over his chest—it occurred to me that I was the one who should’ve been the delivery boy. Like the tip remark, the lines about the sauce would’ve played better the other way around. Or maybe not…a few more sweaty thrusts left me with gobs of sauce sliding down my taint.

  I slowed, reveled in that after-moment, and looked down at Jacob. Even through the blurry haze of the plastic lenses, I would’ve been hard-pressed to imagine he was anybody else, though our lame banter had come easily enough. The agents who did long gigs undercover for the FPMP must’ve had a field day with the BS they dished out. Imagine, not only being able to say whatever you wanted, but to totally reinvent yourself. Someone with enough balls to think he deserved a free meal for simply putting out—I wouldn’t mind being that guy. Not because I necessarily envied him. Just to see what it felt like.

  I bet it would be liberating. In real life, everything you said or did had repercussions that could stretch to infinity. But undercover, the story you spun only lasted the duration of your assignment. Once it did its job, it would collapse like a broken spiderweb and be swept away.

  That afternoon, I’d been given the chance to step into someone else’s shoes, and I’d just thrown the opportunity away. The minute we drove away from the townhouse, I went right back to being my usual awkward self. Kind of a shame I hadn’t really embraced the part. Carl might’ve muttered about it later, but his realtor persona would’ve rolled with the punches. Maybe I could reprise the role at some point, not at work, but at home. I’d bet good money that in the sack, the stay-at-home douchebag indulged in some pretty freaky shit.

  While Jacob basked in the warm afterglow—or, more accurately, the gooey load drying in his chest hair—I gave a squelching grind onto his softening dick to see if maybe we’d go again, but no. Recovery time was in order. That was fine, too. We had time. Not just all night, but all the time in the world.

  He reassembled the living room while I showered off. The goo in my hair needed more attention than the goo between my legs. Then again, maybe I was just less accustomed to it. I felt like my old self again when I joined Jacob on the couch for dinner.

  I scoped out the takeout containers. Pad Thai? Yes.

  “So,” Jacob ventured. “Exactly how classified was this undercover mission?”

  I couldn’t blame him for wondering—if the shoe was on the other foot, I would’ve been plenty curious, myself—but my afternoon had been so ho-hum, I didn’t even have to downplay it for his sake. “Nothing earth-shattering. Laura wanted me to exorcise the property without freaking out the neighborhood. Doubt anything was lingering in the house anyway, other than a bad smell.”

  “So you didn’t have to deal with any neighbors?”

  “Nope, just a disturbing odor. Kind of a shame F-Pimp spent so much time prettying me up for a two-hour appearance.”

  I could see about a million questions bubbling up, so I checked my phone again for the briefing. The documentation I get from Laura Kim doesn’t self-destruct or anything quite as dramatic as that. But once in a while, documents do disappear from my inbox. I’m sure someone from IT has explained the exact mechanism to me…and I’m sure I tuned them completely out. But for the moment, it was there. I slid the phone over to Jacob. “Go ahead and check it out for yourself.”

  He read. I flicked on the TV. We ate. The news was its usual discouraging self—people in Chicago can’t help but shoot at each other, and we only hear about the ones who didn’t miss. But Jacob wasn’t making all the usual grunts of disgust we both typically made over the newscast. His eyes stayed on the phone. Had he ever done any undercover work, himsel
f? Apparently he found it fascinating—I’m not sure if he was cut out for it, though. Not only was it a heck of a lot harder than it looked, but Jacob was just so…well…he was just so Jacob that it was hard to imagine him being anybody else. Even as a delivery boy, he was patently unconvincing. Hot. But unconvincing. As I was considering how he’d look in a clingy pair of bike shorts, he looked up, met my eyes, and said, “You didn’t finish reading this, did you?”

  “Guilty as charged.” Big surprise.

  “Vic, this wasn’t a one-day job. The salting was just the first phase of a lengthy assignment—now you’ve got surveillance on a psychic neighbor. Once enough time passes for a plausible real estate transaction to have happened, you’ll be expected to move in.”

  What?

  We stared at each other for a moment. Once the news sunk in, I said, “Well, that’s just great. Did I mention the top floor smells like decomp?”

  “And…you’re married.”

  “Won’t that be a treat for the lucky lady? Who’s the bride? Is it Veronica? At least she makes good coffee.”

  Jacob quelled a smile. “Not quite.”

  “Okay, who? Not a telepath, I hope. Santiago doesn’t work in the field, does she? Holy hell, tell me it’s not a telepath.”

  “Not a telepath.” He was definitely amused. “An empath.”

  My initial thought? Stefan. The townhouse was two blocks off the main drag in Boystown, after all, and Laura somehow managed to recruit him and pair us off in a mockery of what our life might have been, had Camp Hell gone down any differently. But no, of course it wouldn’t be Stefan. The FPMP might not bat an eyelash over my current living arrangement, but I couldn’t imagine they’d marry me off to another guy.

  Or would they?

  Jacob might not be empathic, but no doubt he could tell my internal landscape was veering into nightmare territory. He slid over my phone and zoomed in on the name of my future spouse.

  Jack Bly.

  5

  If I had to marry an empath, I suppose I could have done worse than Agent Jack Bly. Not only was he calm and easygoing, he wasn’t bad-looking, and we had a thing or two in common. Unfortunately, I would’ve been a lot more comfortable getting partnered with a woman. Especially one who couldn’t pick up on my emotions.

  Then again, the more I thought about it, the more I warmed to the idea. Jack Bly might’ve freaked me out when I first met him, but that was before I realized he was ex-PsyCop John Wembly, the “guy with the hair.” Minus the hair. And the pudge. Plus some cheekbone implants, colored contacts, and a heaping helping of solid muscle. I’d thought Wembly ended up dead in a ditch with his head missing and his fingerprints burned off. It was a huge relief to find out he’d just upgraded his career.

  For the next week, the Program trained me intensively for undercover work with classes and readings. So many classes and so many readings, you’d swear I’d be expected to write a term paper on the subject. Jacob devoured the reading and highlighted the pertinent parts for me. I did my best to struggle through. Purportedly, the subject I would be keeping tabs on for my maiden voyage was a harmless old man, but I figured I shouldn’t get lax. If this undercover gig turned regular, someday they might send me into a situation where I found a gun in my face, and nowhere in my skinny jeans to hide a sidearm.

  The cover story was this: the two of us were newlyweds, moved in from the suburbs to be closer to Bly’s work. Neither of us had taken the other’s last name, though in typical FPMP fashion, Bly was re-spelled b-l-i-g-h, and Bayne (with a y-n-e) turned into Baine, i-n-e. Bligh worked downtown at the Leo Burnett ad agency, I stayed home and wrote cerebral articles for publications that would bore a bird off its perch if you ever used them for cage-liner. The magicians in the tradecraft department managed to get a few of my pieces on the internet, backdated as if they’d been there for years, just in case any of my new neighbors got curious. His treatises on the societal paradigm shift in regard to discrimination against the gay community were even more tedious than the tradecraft articles that kept putting me to sleep.

  Most of our training happened in my office—Carl, Bly and me—with Agent Lipton drilling us on our cover story and our assignment. “Of course, it’s easier when only one person goes in,” Veronica said. “You can make up more of your history on the fly. If you do need to invent a key piece of information, make sure you text it to your partner. And keep it general. You don’t want to go on about your favorite sister-in-law, and then have your spouse claim to be an only child.”

  I cut my eyes to Bly, and said, “Only child.”

  He nodded. “Same.”

  Veronica went on, “Your subject is right next door. He’s failed the mediumship test a number of times—even with our most accurate new assessments. He’s persistent, though.”

  The subject in question, Sylvester Hale, was an enigma, to say the least. He was a single gay man in his early eighties who was hell-bent on acing the official Psych Scoring. Failing the test when you actually do have talent wasn’t entirely uncommon, especially for mediums, who were so few and far between. But Psych tests have changed since my time at Camp Hell. And if a high level telepath couldn’t vouch for Hale’s claims of mediumship, yet he insisted on continuing to pour money into more testing, F-Pimp wanted to know why.

  Veronica handed me a set of keys. “There’s a locked cabinet in the utility room stocked with exorcism supplies. When you have guests over, discourage them from poking around down there, just in case.”

  “We’re supposed to have guests?” I blurted out.

  “That’s the part that worries you?” Bly said.

  “Well, yeah. I already salted the place. It’s empty.”

  Veronica rolled her eyes. “Yes, you’ll have guests. You need to form a relationship with your neighbor. You won’t be very effective just sitting in your house playing Candy Crush, will you? Anyway, we’ve tried to anticipate your needs, but if there’s anything else the Program can provide that would be out-of-character for your cover identity to purchase, let me know, and I’ll send your realtor, Agent Hinds, to do a follow-up with you.”

  “For instance,” I said, “because we just noticed the smell of decomp.”

  Bly shook his head. “And you’ve gotta keep bringing up the decomp.”

  “Like I’ve said,” Veronica assured us, “the area was deep-cleaned yesterday with a special ozone treatment. The decomp odor was taken care of. I’m positive. I gave it the sniff-test myself. No more stink unless something else dies there, ha ha. So, wardrobe’s in place, vehicle’s ready, and the movers just finished up. If there’s anything else, don’t hesitate to call. And one last thing….” She pulled out a plastic baggie and tossed it on the desk. It jingled. “Pick your rings.”

  Bly gestured at the bag. “Rookies first.”

  I squinted at the bag of wedding bands like it might be full of decomp.

  “They’re all the same,” Veronica said. “Plain gold bands draw the least amount of attention—no one will be trying to figure out if there’s any fun history behind the rings and leave you both with conflicting stories. Find your size, and you’re good to go.”

  On the outside, I was just making sure the band fit over my knuckle without rattling around too much. On the inside, a whole bunch of stuff was playing out that I had no idea was even there. Maybe the stagers thought the crooked baseball cap was a big disguise, but for something so tiny, the ring definitely carried all the weight.

  “Can I tell Agent Marks I’m going now?”

  “Block his number, and I’ll let him know that you’ve been deployed. Until this assignment is complete, no contact with anyone from your real life. Got it?”

  A sudden case of separation anxiety reared up, leaving me startled, worried, and a little bit heartsick. So I did what I’d trained myself to do ever since I joined the force: put on my blandest cop-face, and with no inflection at all, replied, “Got it.”

  “You’ll do fine,” Bly told me, as we headed for t
he garage. “In undercover work, the biggest thing is to not carry yourself like a cop. You shift in and out of the stance, no problem.”

  That was news to me. I had no idea I ever took the stance to begin with. Maybe I wouldn’t be too bad at undercover work after all.

  Since Bly was the breadwinner in our family, the stagers had given him a more professional look, all black and gray. Wool slacks, cashmere cardigan, and a slinky, washed-out designer T-shirt with a price tag that would doubtless have me quietly tucking the thing back onto the shelf. Good thing his identity was fancier than mine—he was way too muscular to carry off the jeans that were currently squeezing my nuts.

  The garage attendant handed us the keys to a silverish Lexus that had seen a few miles, with a plausible salt crust hazing the paint job. Maybe it got that way by driving around Chicago in the winter. Maybe a group of stagers painstakingly recreated the look. Who’s to say? The rainbow sticker that ran across the interior of the rear window could’ve been new, but since it was stuck to the inside of the vehicle, it didn’t look obvious.

  Bly glanced at the key fob. “Who drives?”

  “Go for it.”

  “Consistency—if I drive now, when we’re together, I’m the driver.”

  “I see dead people in the road all night long.”

  “Right. You get shotgun.”

  We headed up toward Boystown. Bly turned on the radio, futzed around with it for a few seconds, found a classic rock station and said, “Is this okay?”

  I waved a hand. “Whatever.”

  “Any patterns we establish, they’re going to be our baseline habits. At least until the assignment is over.”

  And how long was that going to be? Already, I was missing the fact that Jacob knew I preferred the murmur of news, or even better, the police band. Not because I could do anything about the various calls that were coming in, but because it was my equivalent of sleeping with one eye open. Plus, radio stations these days never played anything I liked. Or if they did, they called the music of my misspent youth Oldies, which only served to piss me off. We drove a few more blocks in silence, and eventually, Bly said, “It’s good that you can trust me enough to tell me about the nighttime ghosts.”