Tramps and Thieves

by Rhys Ford

  “Sure, let’s get back to the case. I want to talk to you about your cousin’s account of the afternoon.” The detective’s smile bordered on reptilian, shaking a bit of confidence from Rook’s spine. “He seems to remember things a little bit differently than you do. You can stay if you want, Montoya, but I’m going to need Stevens here to clarify a few bits before there’s any talk about him leaving.”

  Alex folded. Rook could see it on Vicks’s face. He was fond of his slightly older, or maybe younger cousin—his mom’s inability to remember Rook’s birth year notwithstanding—but Alex was, in his heart of hearts, so law-abiding he made Rook’s teeth hurt.

  “What’d he tell you? That we were there to return a pair of bowling shoes or something?” Rook pulled one of the chairs over, then straddled it, facing the door and Vicks. “Don’t think I said anything to you other than I went into Harold’s house and found him dead on the floor.”

  “I’d believe you, but unless you fell down the stairs or one of my guys popped you in the face, that cut lip of yours says something different. See, here’s what I’m thinking.” Vicks stepped all the way into the room, then closed the door behind him. “I think you don’t like losing, Stevens, and dear old cousin Harold got your goat. Not something you’re willing to just let slide, not if you—a well-known thief and a con—was conned out of something he really, really wanted.”

  Pulling free of Dante took some doing. Not because the cop wouldn’t let him go, but rather Rook felt safe with the feel of his lover’s heat on him. Montoya was a distraction. He didn’t have time to sort out the confusion brewing inside of him, not with having to spin some damage control over what Alex told the cops. Rook knew he wasn’t going to be able to think if he could feel Dante, because it took every ounce of his willpower to step away and stand on his own.

  He hated having Dante as a weakness, someone Vicks or any number of people could use against him. In the past, he’d have distanced himself as quickly as he could as soon as he felt even a tingle of affection, shoring up his defenses and protecting himself, but this time, it was different. This time, there would be no letting go—even if Montoya was willing to let him walk away.

  Something Rook knew was never going to happen so long as either one of them could still breathe.

  “Does he need a lawyer?” Dante stood, matching Vicks stare for stare. “Because that can happen.”

  The lawyer thing was a surprise, especially coming from a cop… even his own cop, and Rook leaned back, gripping the top of the chair’s back, watching the two detectives have a silent battle of wills. He’d put his money on Dante any day. Dante wouldn’t give in to any of the other cop’s pressure, standing firmly at Rook’s side, as odd as it might seem, where Vicks was a bully, a familiar construct of ego and brute force, one Rook knew all too well from growing up on the circuit. The problem he saw with Vicks was if they didn’t find someone else for the cynical cop to focus on, he wouldn’t stop hounding Rook until something gave.

  In a lot of ways, Vicks reminded Rook of Dante’s old partner, and that took Death knocking on the asshole’s door before he finally stopped chewing on Rook’s tail.

  “How about if we pull that rabbit out of our asses after Vicks tells me what Alex said?” The look Dante gave him promised a hell of a lot of talking as soon as they got someplace where no one would overhear them. “I’m interested in finding out why I wanted Harold dead.”

  “See, this is where it gets tricky, because your cousin’s a bit vague on a few details, and he can’t verify seeing this ski-mask-wearing intruder you claim attacked you. And I say claim because your supposed injuries could be self-inflicted, or you could have even had Alex hit you,” Vicks replied, hitching a hip on the edge of the table Dante vacated. “You’re barely scratched and there’s hardly any bruising. So the story about you fighting someone off is a bit weak.”

  “I don’t think Alex even knows how to make a fist, much less punch someone,” Rook scoffed. “I told you, the guy caught me with a hook and I slipped on the wet floor. He didn’t go out the front or Alex would have seen him. The hillside’s easy enough to slip down, or he could have cut across the lawn next door.”

  “Maybe. Or just maybe you’re lying,” Vicks mocked. “Your cousin alleges he doesn’t know why you needed to see Harold, but the bit about you being concerned about him doesn’t ring true. Alex also informed me the three of you aren’t close. In fact, he’s of the opinion you and Harold have a bit of a rivalry going.”

  “Rivalry about what? Not like we’re going after the same woman.” Rook nodded toward Dante. “I’ve already got the best Los Angeles has to offer.”

  “More cute. The two of you are going to make me too sick to choke down my TV dinner when I get home.” The detective sneered. “Actually, there’s your grandfather and the pile of cash he’s probably sitting on. My theory is you’re pulling probably the longest con of your life. You roll into LA, set it up so it looks like you’ve gone straight, and then con the old man out of everything he’s got.”

  “Hole in that theory,” Dante rumbled. “He’s actually Archibald Martin’s grandson.”

  “Old man make you spit on a swab?” The detective chuckled when Rook squared his shoulders. “Yeah, I didn’t think so. You’re not the type of guy who’d do that. Even if you were the old man’s grandkid. Smacks too much of someone tagging you, and if there’s one thing guys like you hate, it’s being tracked.”

  “If you saw Archie, you’d know I didn’t need to get a Q-Tip shoved into my mouth to see I was his grandson. And once again, Harold was dead before I got there,” Rook pointed out. “If you got a good look at him, you’d see that. You don’t need to be an expert on dead bodies to know he was very much dead.”

  “Funny how you think that, because we’re not so certain he was very much dead when you showed up. Coroner’s not gotten to him yet, but I did hear something kind of interesting from that neck of the woods,” Vicks replied. “Prelim says Harold was knifed in the gut sometime this morning. Looks like someone got him about fifteen or so times. But the funny thing about poor cousin Harold, that isn’t what killed him.”

  “Someone gets stabbed that many times and you’re telling me that didn’t kill him?” Rook refused to meet Dante’s puzzled gaze and shut down the panic brewing in his belly. As far as he knew, Harold was dead, but a whisper of doubt slithered past his confidence. “Okay, I bite. What killed Harold?”

  “Cousin Harold was down for the count, and according to the fine people down at the morgue, he was probably going to die or had died from bleeding out of his wounds.” Vicks’s grin deepened, curling up to leave a tiny evil light in his eyes. “But it looks like someone came back to finish the job and caved his brains in with one ugly black resin falcon, a statue that looks remarkably like the one Harold’s mother tells me the two of you argued over this past Sunday. So tell me, Stevens, you still going to call that lawyer now, or are you and I going to have a long conversation about how you literally took care of sharing a massive inheritance and got revenge with bashing Harold’s head in one bird?”

  IF EVER there was a man Dante wanted to wrap up in blanket and tuck into bed, it was Rook Stevens.

  Dante also wanted to shake some sense into the man and then either fuck him senseless or tie him to a chair but mostly tuck him into bed until all of the shit storm Rook stirred up passed over them. And no matter where Rook went, there was sure to be a storm.

  The car ride over to Archie’s home had been long and silent. If it’d been any other man, Dante would have said his boyfriend was sulking, but Rook didn’t sulk. He plotted, conned, and finagled, but sulking wasn’t a part of Rook’s makeup. The silence between them was a charged quiet, and Dante could practically hear Rook’s brain churning away next to him.

  Driving up to Rook’s grandfather’s place still made the poor little Laredo kid in Dante wince. The rambling castle, imported brick by brick from the British Isles, stood in the middle of Los Angeles’s gamboling low
hills, a jutting gray edifice to the Martin ego. Ivy artfully climbed up its turrets, and instead of a moat, an enormous water fountain—about the same square footage as Dante’s modest bungalow—dominated the front drive. Massive arched windows sparkled from their casings along the front wall, their stained-glass panes adding a prismatic shimmer to the slate and verdant structure.

  Rosa opened the door nearly as soon as they pulled up, her elegant, beautiful face somber with worry. She let her fingers trail over Rook’s arms when he passed by, the long-legged former thief stopping only long enough to leave a brief kiss on the Hispanic woman’s cheek before he stalked down the main foyer.

  “Hello, Rosa.” Dante closed the front door behind him. “Where’s the old man?”

  “In the yellow room,” she replied, then chuckled, probably spotting the confused look on his face. “Down the hall and to the left, right after the pink grandfather clock. The door’s open. You’ll probably hear Mr. Archie yelling. He hasn’t stopped yelling since Alex got here with James.”

  As far as Dante was concerned, whoever decorated the inside of the Martin castle needed to have their eyes checked. While most of the furniture in the rooms ran to classic pieces, the halls were a gauntlet of questionable taste and possible evidence someone took a handful of psychedelics that never wore off. There weren’t any empty flat surfaces, with every table bristling with odd knickknacks ranging from very expensive vases to animals made of jute and painted seashells. The grandfather clock was less pink and more flaming orchid, its garish face resplendent with gold lettering and cloisonné birds. Rosa was right. The door was open, but the yelling being done inside was sharp and edged, a familiar enough rasp of smoky tones Dante’d loved to hear murmur his name.

  “Do you believe this shit?” Rook’s long legs took him easily across Archie’s living room. “Asshole thinks I killed Harold. I didn’t even hate the asshole enough to… okay, yeah, so I broke in, but fucker took my damned statue. No one steals from me and fucking walks off.”

  Or, Dante mused, he thought it was one of Archie’s living rooms. It could have been a sitting room or, hell, a closet for all Dante knew, since most of the rooms were too big to ever be called cozy. He’d lost track of where he was in the Martin patriarch’s house a long time ago, half wondering if there wasn’t a Minotaur wandering about somewhere. It didn’t matter where Rosa, Archie’s long-suffering housekeeper, put them, no room in the shipped-over-from-Ireland castle was big enough for a Martin’s ego, much less two of them.

  Thankfully, the third Martin in the room was Alex, a relatively calm and rational example of the bloodline’s explosive temperament. Standing next to a wet bar hidden inside an ebony armoire, Alex gave Dante high hopes the conversation wouldn’t resolve into pitchforks and torches. Unfortunately, Alex balanced his Zen attitude by falling in love with a strong-willed Latino detective who apparently knew Vicks well enough to form a long-lasting, hardened hatred. James Castillo, a dark-haired sarcastic detective from North Hollywood, saluted Dante with a bottle of beer from his place on a delicate-looking white-legged couch.

  “Rook, Harold’s dead,” Alex pointed out. The family peacemaker, Alex would eventually soften some of Rook’s blunter edges, but he wasn’t holding out for a miracle. “The statue isn’t important.”

  “I know that,” Rook growled back, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Shit, thanks for buying us clothes, James, if I didn’t say that before. I’m just… so damned mad, and for some stupid reason, I’m fucking pissed off as hell at Harold for ending up dead.”

  “Sit down, Montoya, and watch your boy wear a hole in my expensive carpet.” A few feet away from James, Archie sat in a purple velvet wing chair, its empty twin flanking the other side of the room’s river-stone fireplace, and he motioned for Dante to join him. The old man’s face was pale, his leathery skin puckered in around his pursed mouth. Grief lingered in his expression, but worry for his other grandsons left a weariness in his eyes. “Alex, bring the man a beer when you come back. And one for me too.”

  “Has he filled you in on what they were doing at Harold’s house?” Dante muttered beneath another round of Rook’s ranting. “He didn’t say anything in the car.”

  “No, so far, it’s only about Harold stealing something from him and a little bit about Alex being a shitty liar,” James replied in his soft Angeleno-Mexican rumble. “I’m fine with him being a shitty liar. Keeps things honest between us. Between the two of us, Montoya, I think I got the better deal.”

  “I lie just fine,” Alex protested, juggling a couple of cream sodas and a craft beer Archie claimed he stocked for Rook. “No alcohol for you, Grandpa. Nurse said nothing past nine ’cause of your meds.”

  “I oughta fire that damned nurse,” Archie grumbled, beetling his thick eyebrows together. “She’s sucking the life out of me. A man should be able to have a beer if he wants one.”

  “Sure, have a beer. Have five. Chug it down with your meds. Just make sure you leave everything to me and Alex, because according to that damned cop down there, it’s why I murdered Harold the dickwad.” Rook stopped his pacing, meeting his grandfather’s bi-colored gaze with a glare. “I don’t want the house. Alex can have it. How about the cars? Maybe the collection of stuffed flying monkeys in the dining room? Or the herd of porcelain llamas in the library?”

  “You’re not too big for me to put over my knee and spank,” Archie threatened softly, shaking his cane at his grandson. “And I’m leaving the damned monkeys to my lawyer, Lynn. She’s had her eye on them for years now. Now shut up about the damned beer. I’ll drink the soda. God knows what’s going to happen to your scrawny ass once I’m gone. Going to have to bring Montoya up to snuff or he’ll be bailing you out every other week.”

  “I’d just leave him in there,” James muttered to Dante. “He’d get into less trouble in jail.”

  “Yeah, fuck you, Castillo,” Rook shot back with a cocky smile. “I’ll drag Dante to a desert island in the middle of the ocean before I ever go to jail.”

  “Shut up about going to jail and get this damned thing open for me, you little bastard. We need to talk about what you found at Harold’s, and no sugarcoating it. I’m old, not weak. I can grieve after we find the bastard who killed that boy,” Archie grumbled at Rook. “What the hell was wrong with bottle caps and a church key?”

  Dante only had to look at Archie to see what his lover would look like in sixty years or so. Proud, with elegant, hawk-like features, Archibald Martin suffered no fools, but a bit of softness lurked beneath his hard, crusty surface. There were differences, some not so subtle, but their mismatched eyes were cunning with a hint of sly, and their faces ran to stubborn more than Dante liked. But where Archie bullied and ordered people around, Rook danced them over to where he needed them to be, silver-tongued but aloof enough to make someone want to please him. Watching the pair of them fight bordered on ludicrous at times, especially when Archie pushed Rook too far and they then had to walk themselves back from a crumbling cliff.

  There was no mistaking the love they had for one another. That much was clear. Even in the small things Rook did, like twisting off the top of his grandfather’s drink, there were signs of affection if someone only knew where to look.

  “You want a glass?” Rook held the plastic bottle out for his grandfather to take, but the man’s leathery blue-veined hand shook slightly when he reached for it. “Maybe a tumbler. One of those rubberized one? With some ice?”

  “Yeah, that’s good. I want it cold. Go do that, or get Alex to do it.” Archie nodded to his other grandson. “Kid, I want to hear Rook tell me why the cops found him standing over another damned body. And Harold’s, for fuck’s sake. Why Harold? Boy was tits-on-a-fish useless and a little mean, but he didn’t do anything other than annoy people. Didn’t have enough brains to really piss anyone off.”

  “Pissed Rook off,” Alex pointed out.

  “You, babe, are not helping,” James replied with a grin. “That’s called
a motive, something we’re trying to avoid right now.”

  James met Dante’s glance with a helpless shrug, sitting up on the couch to make room for Alex. They’d both come from work, holsters tucked under leather jackets and their jeans dusted with Los Angeles’s filth. James’s cowboy boots were worn down, broken in from years of use, and there was something scrawled on his right heel, a flash of black marker Dante caught when he crossed his leg.

  “Something on your foot, man,” Dante said, nodding at James’s foot. “What did you walk in?”

  “Not in. Into.” James made a face, angling his foot so Dante could see Alex’s name scribbled on his heel. “And that would be a Martin. Long story. I’ll explain later.”

  “Will the two of you shut up?” Archie grumbled. “Rook’s going to start explaining what the hell he was doing at Harold’s house. Or so help me—”

  “Give it up, old man,” Rook countered. “If it weren’t for me and Alex, you’d be stuck here with only Rosa to talk to. And that’s only if you’re lucky she doesn’t park you in the library and take your cane away from you.”

  “Just… talk, cuervo,” Dante took a welcome sip of his beer. “I need to know what I’m going to be dealing with where Vicks’s concerned. Did you see him smile when you played the lawyer card? He wants a fight, and he wants it with you.”

  “What did that cop say, Montoya? I already had the suits on their way as soon as this one called me, but none of them got back to me with anything other than it was being handled and they had to bully Rook into letting them photograph where he was hit.” Archie slapped at the chair’s thick arm. “If that cop—Vicks—if he’s using this to brownnose someone, I’ll nail his badge to his ass and hang it over my damned fireplace for decoration.”

  “Tío, I don’t think this house could take any more decoration.” Dante grimaced. “Lawyers showed up before Vicks could read Rook his rights, but he’d already started to turn the screws while we were in the interview room. Vicks doesn’t like playing by the book. Wasn’t hard to see that.”