Tramps and Thieves

by Rhys Ford

  The grunt he got was a satisfying one, but his attacker was heavier than he looked and Rook only gained a few inches of space into the room. His hip struck the doorframe, throwing him off-kilter, and the floor’s slickness made his footing treacherous. He couldn’t see what hit him, not with the whitewash coming through the bedroom’s wall of windows.

  The figure was a silhouette in a balaclava against the light, but his arm went up again, straining to lift the heavy oddly shaped object he held in his right hand. Unwilling to get struck again, Rook lunged, trying to grapple at his attacker’s waist, hoping to catch his opponent’s arms and tangle his limbs to keep him immobile. Rook struck hard, shoving them both back to get clear of the door.

  Close-in fighting was something Rook’d cut his teeth on. The carnival circuit was a hard one, a physical, violent world with short, hot skirmishes and long, simmering memories. The smack of flesh hitting bone was as familiar to Rook as his own face, and he’d used his clenched fists to brawl his way out of trouble long before he learned how to coax open a door or charm the people around him.

  Propelling his body with a push of his legs, Rook slammed into his attacker, going on the offensive in the hope of getting some control of the conflict. He needed to get into a more open space than the hallway with its dangerously tight landing and open stairs. With his back toward the steps, it wouldn’t take more than a few pushes to get him to the edge, and then the dog shit under them would be the least of his worries. He landed a punch to his attacker’s ribs and followed by a knee up, hoping he could keep the man off-balance enough to either drop what he was carrying or at least not have enough momentum for a solid hit.

  He struck hard and fast, pinpointing his punches to where he could get in past the man’s chaotic windmilling arms. Ribs were a good landing spot, but Rook liked under the belly button, jabbing his clenched fists into the soft roll of flesh to distract, then bringing up a punch to the face. He got one good hit on the intruder’s covered jaw, but Rook knew the knitted cap pulled down over most of his face took away a lot of the impact. In the fluctuating shadows, he couldn’t make out more than a slice of eyes and pale skin surrounded by a field of thick black yarn, but a push of hot air along Rook’s wrist told him the intruder was struggling.

  The damned bedroom floor proved to be Rook’s undoing. Since it was made of the same glossy dark stone as the stairs, Rook didn’t see the glisten of moisture until it was too late. He struck the edge of a thin puddle and twisted in midair when his foot shot out from underneath him. Having to choose between continuing the fight or minimizing his fall, his instincts took control over his brain and Rook turned, hoping to take the impact with the side of his body and protect his joints while his attacker flailed about with the cylindrical weight. Unfortunately while his muscle memory was intent on saving Rook’s ass, it left the side of his head wide open, and the intruder’s desperate swing scored a direct hit.

  The pain was a swift blast of white stars and ache. His head shot back from the blow, and the impact was hard enough to push Rook’s jaw to the side. He tried to absorb some of the hit by giving in to its arc, but with his body turning in the opposite direction, the most Rook could do was soften the blow. The intruder lost control of his weapon, and it flew off, hitting something in the room with an oddly wet splat.

  Rook landed hard, tangled around himself and gasping from the echoing throb along his temple. Panicked, his brain ground out commands, urging Rook to get to his feet, to gain some ground before his attacker could strike again, but his head hurt too much, and his eyes couldn’t seem to find anything to focus on. Blood coated his lips, but Rook couldn’t find where he’d bitten himself or even if he cared enough to do more than jab at the inside of his mouth with his tongue.

  Self-preservation forced him to turn over, and he blinked, trying to orient himself in the room. His hands were wet, and the walls spun about a bit, but Rook pushed himself up. Clenching his fists, he squared himself off, readying to continue the fight. Shuffling around on the balls of his feet, Rook scanned the room, keeping his arms up and loose, but the room was empty, silent except for his own heavy breathing.

  “Son of a bitch,” he spat, disgusted enough to take a few steps to follow his attacker, but the jab of pain across his eyes brought Rook up short. Pressing the heel of his hand into the middle of his forehead, he willed the throb to subside as he took stock of his options. He’d taken too long to get up, and the bastard chose to run instead of sticking around. “Fucker’s probably already out the front door. Goddamn it.”

  Rook took a moment to catch his breath, and he dabbed at the blood on his lips with his tongue, disgusted by the taste of metal in his mouth, and for some reason, he couldn’t get the smell of it out of his nose. Wiping at his face with the back of his hand, Rook was surprised to see only a light tacky smear of dark red on the beige latex.

  “What the fuck?” Blinking, Rook let his eyes adjust to the bright light numbing the room’s features, hoping to clear the stars across his vision along with the headache burrowing its claws into his temples. His hand came away clean when he ran it over the spot where he’d been struck on the head, but the bloody aroma hounded him. “Where the hell am I bleed….”

  A clatter of tiny nails on the marble floor drew Rook’s attention, and he turned around, catching the full brutal wash of sunlight streaming through the western-facing windows. It took a moment, but a small orange puffball of a dog was the first thing Rook pulled out of the receding shadows as his vision adjusted. It beamed up at him, panting with a toothy smile. Then Rook spotted the naked dead man in the middle of the room—a dead man with an oddly familiar avian statue lying across his hairy, bloated stomach.

  In life, Harold Archibald Barnsworth Martin had been a blustery force of ego and condescension, puffed up on an importance fueled by money and an infantile temperament. In death, he was a stiff plank of white flesh mottled with dried blood, his manhood a shriveled spaetzle of flesh tucked up under his purpling stomach.

  The Pomeranian danced around Rook’s legs as he bent over to retrieve the Bluetooth link he’d dropped in the fight. Giving the dog a reassuring scratch, he tucked the speaker into his ear, hoping it retained its connection. Tapping it on, he winced through some crackle, then heard Alex shout a hello over the line.

  “Alex, I’m going to need you to call the cops,” Rook said as he picked up the dog and cradled it to his side. It squirmed while he carefully approached Harold’s body. He didn’t have a lot of hope the man was still alive, and when he saw the caved-in remains of Harold’s head, he knew the asshole he’d come to prank was never going to spit insults at him from across a dining room table ever again.

  The object he’d come to steal balanced precariously on Harold’s stomach for another moment before gravity took over, sliding its chunky black form down the fleshy curve to come to a rest against Harold’s rigid, tucked-in arm. A squared-off ugly bird made of resin and resentment, the Maltese Falcon stared up at Rook, an unblinking, judgmental witness to Harold’s death.

  “What’s going on, Rook?” Alex broke through the dog’s whining to be let down. “Why am I calling the cops?”

  “Because someone’s murdered our asshole cousin,” he muttered, edging back away from Harold’s still form. “And it looks like he was killed with my damned bird.”

  Two

  LOS ANGELES glittered amber and blue behind him, the skyline fanning out around the surrounding low-lying hills. The springtime night was cool, a slight bite to the air with a promise of frosty morning lingering on the edge of the horizon. Tucked into the canyons and rises, the upper reaches of Hollywood were far from the loud brashness of its boulevards and the garish desperation of its more well-known neighborhoods. Still, the city strained to be heard in the hills.

  Just past dusk, the night held a hint of water in it, chased with a metallic taint from the canyon’s gritty dust. Another sniff brought in the rasp of sage and pine, a sweet, smoky aroma tickling his nose. The city w
as an amber-and-ebony serpentine sprawl around the hills, its golden palette dotted with sparkling gemstones of traffic lights and neon signs. And despite the peaceful lull around him, Los Angeles refused to be still.

  The unmarked car’s rolled-down windows let the city in, taking a bit of the edge off of Montoya’s restlessness. A whisper of early-evening traffic from the distant streets fed Los Angeles’s constant murmur, a tumble of rolling whooshes with an occasional horn popping an aggrieved warning. Somewhere below, lost in the city’s bowels, a siren chased through the streets, an unseen ambulance warbling its mournful cries.

  A long, meandering drive through the hills was just what he needed, an odd Zen Dante could only find when surrounded by the scent of gun oil, abused police equipment, and the dubious remains of Hank’s lunch tucked under the front seat of their department-issued vehicle.

  “Shit, I got mustard on my pants,” Camden grumbled, breaking the mood. “Wife just fricking washed these pants, and now there’s mustard on them. She’s going to kill me.”

  “So you wash them before she sees it.” Dante sat up straighter, the car seat squeaking under him. Hank rumbled something soft and guilty as he drove, and Dante glanced at his partner, amused at the blush creeping over his face. “You do know how to wash your own clothes, right, Camden?”

  “I may or may not have been banned from the laundry room,” the redhead confessed. “In my defense, I was trying to help. Who the hell puts things that can’t go into the dryer in the hamper? Hampers are where you put the clothes you can just toss in and walk away. You don’t put fifty-dollar bras that fall apart if you look at them wrong in a hamper. It’s just not right! What happened to the good old days when you could trust your own clothes?”

  “You, Camden, are a menace. I’m surprised Debra even thought you were marriage material.”

  As partners went, Hank Camden was one of the best. Chipped off of Scottish and Viking stock, he was a lanky man with ruddy features, copper-bright hair, and freckled under his weekend-lawn-mowing tan. Amiable and gregarious, he easily coaxed old ladies and children when taking eyewitness accounts and made friends with even the most hardened criminals, often leaving them behind bars with a hearty laugh and a promise to play a round of hoops once they got out. But behind the Foghorn Leghorn charm was a steel-trap mind and a cunning detective with a solve rate most cops could only dream of.

  Dante’d been lucky with Hank, far luckier than he’d been with his first partner, but then, he couldn’t have gotten worse than a bitter cancer-ridden senior detective bent on taking down a cat burglar named Rook Stevens, no matter what the cost. Vince was drummed out and died not long after he’d been caught falsifying evidence, and Dante’s career barely survived Vince’s fall from grace.

  The thing he liked about being partnered with Hank Camden was the ease of their relationship. On paper, they shouldn’t have worked. While Dante was a gay Cuban-Mexican kid from Laredo, Hank was from an upper-middle-class suburban family, heavily educated and married to a woman he loved deeply enough to have several children with. Camden was an awkward freckled cop with an easy grin and an even easier manner.

  He was also one of the sharpest cops Dante Montoya had ever met.

  In the years since Vince’s death, Rook’d gone straight—as hard as that was for Dante to believe at first—and Hank’d proven to be a solid partner, accepting of Dante’s sexuality even though he wasn’t so sure of Dante’s taste in men.

  Their friendship deepened during the long days spent cooped up in a police car sifting through Los Angeles’s millions for the ugly few who’d taken up killing as a pastime. He’d been a steadying force while Dante struggled with his conflicted emotions over Rook, a former thief Dante’d spent a good chunk of his early career trying to arrest. The fallout of that failed investigation nearly cost Dante his career, so when Stevens surfaced again, Dante’d been chomping at the bit to take the slippery thief down.

  He’d fallen in love with the damned thief instead.

  Sometimes Dante wasn’t sure about his taste in men either, but there was something about the lean, muscular former thief that stroked every hot spot in Dante’s body. From his odd green-blue heterochromia, to his striking, strong features, Rook’d dug into Dante’s heart and made himself at home, all the while protesting their relationship. Rook’s sarcastic drawl and sharp wit were tempered by his generous heart, and despite his best efforts at hiding his true feelings, Rook cared about the people around him.

  Hank steered the car out of a turn and onto another winding street. “God, I wish someone in this city would just draw a fucking straight line on the map once in a while. You better pray the GPS is steering us straight, or some damned Minotaur’s going to eat us. We’re off shift in what? Half an hour? Going to take us that long to get back to the station.”

  “Your knowledge of mythology amazes me.” Dante chuckled. “I didn’t think they did ancient Greek porn. Learn something new every day.”

  “Hey, I was a lit major for a year and a half before I decided I liked shooting people.” Hank glanced at Dante. “We’re going to be coming out at that taco shop… the bright pink one. You want to stop and grab something to eat before we head back to the station? Or maybe Cuban. You’re half Cuban. How come we never eat Cuban food?”

  Dante’s phone chimed in before Dante could answer, and the partners exchanged looks. It’d been a long day, over ten hours of chasing down dead-end leads which culminated in a long drive up into the hills to speak to a well-aged former Playboy bunny with a raspy drawl and roaming hands. They’d been technically off shift half an hour ago, but none of that meant anything to anyone back at the station. As long as the car was out, they were considered live catch for any crime-baited hook.

  “Captain?” Camden asked softly. “Nah, can’t be the captain. Can’t imagine you tagging Book’s number with ‘The Devil’s Brew.’”

  “No, it’s Rook,” Dante said, digging his phone out of his jacket pocket. “Hey, bab—”

  His lover ran on high-octane, a spit of words and temperament Dante often struggled to keep up with. Most of their time together was spent trying to slow Rook down, but this time, he wasn’t having any of Dante’s calm. A hurried stream of words and emotion tore through the line. Then a sharp voice cut into Rook’s stream-of-consciousness babble.

  “Wait, don’t hang up. I didn’t catch all of that,” Dante snapped. “You’re where? I’m coming to get you. Wait… listen to me, cuervo, cooperate but wait for me. What station are you at?”

  “Um, hold on.” Rook’s murmur grew distinct, then strengthened when he rattled off an address in West Los Angeles. “Did you get that?”

  “Yeah, I know that station. Did a stint there. Now do me a favor, take a deep breath, and repeat what you just told me.” He motioned for Hank to pull over. The story didn’t get any prettier in its second telling, and Dante rubbed at the growing throb forming along his forehead. “Okay, yeah. Dios, cuervo, it’s like… try not to let that smart mouth of yours get you into trouble, and I’ll get right over there. Love you—and he’s hung up. Son of a bitch…. Camden, pull over. Rook’s stepped into some shit. I can drop you off at the station—”

  “Hell no. Where you go, I’ll go.” Hank threw the sedan into park in a red zone, ignoring the filthy look he got from a woman in a pink tracksuit walking a swarm of hairless dogs on a handful of sparkling leashes. “What the hell is going on with Stevens?”

  “Nothing good.” Dante pulled a face. “Better I drive anyway. That way you can sweet talk someone down at Dispatch to get more info than what Rook’s got. Damned idiot’s neck-deep in dead bodies again.”

  “DIOS, CUERVO, what have you gotten yourself into?” Dante Montoya pulled up to the curb, edging the unmarked gray sedan in behind a pair of black-and-whites lined up along the front of the station.

  “Dunno, but it looks like your boy’s in it deep,” Hank muttered. “I’m getting stonewalled by everyone I know at the station. ’Course, if it’s got R
ook Stevens’s name on it, most sane cops wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole. You, however—”

  “Make one joke about me, Stevens, and my pole,” Dante growled, “and you’ll be walking back to the station on two broken legs and a fat upper lip. Let’s see what’s going on inside.”

  The West Los Angeles station was a solid square of cinder block and dull paint sitting on a prime piece of real estate off of the 405 and Santa Monica Boulevard. The station’s parking lot gate was left half-open, giving Dante a peek into a lot where a small cluster of men milled about, and the building’s entrance was easy enough to find, a bright red square punching through the drab façade, and if there was any doubt about Rook being inside, Dante nodded toward a sleek black McLaren being lowered off of a flatbed tow truck onto the station’s main parking lot.

  They were in a neighborhood Dante could only have imagined when he was younger, one he’d become more familiar with during his time behind the badge. Much more upscale than the middle-class bungalow he shared with his uncle Manny, many of the homes were tucked behind landscaping and with low white plaster walls running around their property edges. A few hard-looking palms interrupted many of the front lawns’ carpets of too bright grass, and the other end of the street ran to businesses focused more on organic foods and reusable grocery totes than coupons and cheap vegetables.

  Dead was still dead, though. No matter how quickly the community could get their potholes filled in. For all of the differences in Los Angeles’s diverse neighborhoods, Dante found people were basically the same, but it seemed as if the richer the house, the quieter the simmering, so when something blew, it blew up big. Distance between houses meant no one heard the violence brewing behind the family’s walls. It took having the ugly seep out between the cracks in a family’s foundation for someone to notice, for someone to call for help, but oftentimes, help arrived much too late.