Complicated Shadows

by James D F Hannah

  I kept scratching and rubbing at Link's head. His skull felt weird, as rough and un-contoured as a country road. He closed his eyes, and something close to a smile threatened to curl up from the corners of his lips. I pulled my hand back, and his eyes popped open and the noise of pleasure rumbling from within him turned into a growl. I went back to rubbing his head.

  The coffee finished and Woody poured it and set the cups on the table. He tapped Link on the back. Link's head snapped around to stare at Woody. Woody said something in German and pointed toward the living room. I think Link might have sighed before he dropped his head and trotted out to join the rest of the dogs.

  I dumped milk and sugar into the coffee and took a sip. Woody's coffee was the consistency of hot mud, but it was strong and guaranteed to keep you awake, likely for days on end. He took his black. Showoff.

  "The McCoys are nasty souls," Woody said, drinking coffee from a mug with a picture of a cat swinging from a bar and the caption "Hang In There!" "Where the National Brotherhood only had ignorance and fear as a common bond, the McCoys have ignorance, fear, shared bloodlines, and a marijuana business worth millions."

  "The likelihood of them helping us find Isaac is slim, is what you're saying."

  "It is. They've got an Old Testament worldview about things, and a chunk of that keeps them separate from the world."

  "What about the fact about being Isaac's gay, and he never hid the fact?"

  "That might not matter to Tennis McCoy. The overriding factor for him is family, no matter who they opt to bed down with at night. You got their last name, they will fight for you to the end."

  "Tennis McCoy is the family patriarch, I am to presume?"

  "Presume away. He was a kid when the Italian businessman came by, and he's been running the show for decades now. He is an old man in a business that doesn't encourage longevity. You've got to ask yourself what's he done to make sure he lives so long. The correct answer is 'whatever the fuck it takes.' Then ask yourself if this is shit you want to dive into."

  "You're putting out a lot of questions for me to be asking myself, and you're well aware I'm not introspective in the least."

  "You're a shallow puddle on a sunny day."

  "Such a sweetheart you are. I figure, I've got a few days off. I don't guess there's nothing good on TV until the new season of Game of Thrones starts. I say to myself, 'Meh, why not?'"

  "As long as your reasoning is sound. This friend of yours, Pete, he's a good guy?"

  "Wasn't like we were best friends, but he was always steady, always honest."

  "And he's a private investigator now."

  "Got business cards and everything."

  "If he's got business cards then yeah, obviously his shit is legit. What are you getting out of this, he gets Isaac McCoy back?"

  "Part of his fee, which I'll split with you if you'll help." I leaned back in my chair and looked through the doorway into the living room. Six or seven dogs were scattered throughout, stretched out on the floor or sleeping on the couch. "It'd buy you some dog food. Last you through a week or two, at least."

  "At least." Woody finished his coffee and poured himself another cup. "I'm sure I'll regret this. I might regret it already."

  "What's life without a little regret?" I said.

  "A not-unpleasant idea," he said.

  9

  Pete answered the door to his room when I knocked. He smiled, shook Woody's hand and introduced himself, and waved us inside.

  The TV glowed with life, turned to one of those crime shows where they're always looking at stuff underneath a black light and sending samples to the guys in the lab. Pete wore what he'd been wearing earlier in the day, but he looked worse in it. Tired, as if the day had dragged down on him.

  Pete went to the mini-fridge and got himself a beer. He looked back at us and said, "I know what your answer's gonna be, Henry, but what about you, Woody? Get you one?"

  We had taken the chairs next to the window. "My answer's gonna be the same as Henry's," Woody said.

  Pete shook his head. "Damn, but you boys are killing me here." He twisted the cap off the bottle and took a swallow and sat on the edge of the bed. "So what d'you find out?"

  I leaned forward and propped my elbows up on my knees and tried to look thoughtful. "That things are more complicated than you thought."

  I explained to Pete about talking to Dr. Wilder, and the McCoys. He drank his beer as I talked, having me stop at one point so he could grab another. His expression didn't change much, but something shifted in his eyes. The look was one that said he wasn't sure when he'd been lied to, but someone hadn't been telling him the truth.

  I said, "Dealing with the McCoys, if it's where this goes, might be a situation we don't want."

  Pete stared down at his beer. "There's not much of a choice. I have to find this guy."

  Woody said, "The McCoys are bad mamma-jammers, Pete. If this guy you're looking for, if he is at the McCoys' farm, the family's won't just tell us. He's hiding for a reason. The question then becomes if you think they came and got him, or he's here of his own free will?"

  "No idea," Pete said. "There's no reason he would up and run. This guy's personal life was clean. Damn near sparkled."

  "The personal life was all a lie, Pete," I said. "He tried to become someone else for a reason."

  Pete's hand drifted back to the wedding band. He wasn't looking at us anymore. "Not all of it." His voice sounded thick and wet. "It all can't be a lie."

  I glanced over at Woody, raised my eyebrows. He gave me a small nod.

  "Pete," I said, "you need to be honest with Woody and me if you want us to help you."

  "What are you talking about?" Pete said.

  "I mean about you and Isaac McCoy. If you're going into this thing with a vested interest that could put us at risk, you need to tell us now."

  Pete trembled as tears ran down his face. The trembling grew into shaking, and the tears flowed faster and freer, and his big walrus-y face turned red and blotchy, and he buried it in his huge hands as his body vibrated, and from behind those hands came a mournful noise, this pained groaning as this big man broke down in the rawest, most human way possible.

  Woody pulled out a bunch of tissues from the dispenser at the bathroom sink and set them next to Pete, then took his own seat again. We sat without saying a word for a brief eternity. I heard Pete pull a huge breath in, and he brought his hands down and looked up at us with swollen eyes and little bubbles of snot popping out of his nose. He took a handful of the tissues and wiped at his eyes and blew his nose a few times. He trudged to the sink and ran water over his face and toweled off and sat back down on the bed.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "I wasn't sure what you'd say."

  "There's nothing to say. But this isn't strictly a business transaction anymore, so how we handle everything involving the McCoys becomes affected by how you deal with the situation."

  He pushed tears away from the corners of his eyes. "What was the big tip?"

  "There was nothing in the way you talked about this that felt like it was only business," Woody said.

  "Plus, you kept messing with your ring," I said. "The photo you showed me this afternoon, there was an arm around Isaac, and the hand, it had the same ring as what you're wearing. The hand in the photo looked the same as your hand. You've got rather distinctive mitts, Pete."

  "Yeah, I suppose I knew it'd come to this. I... I would have told you. I wasn't sure when the right time was."

  "At the beginning would have been good, but now works, too."

  Pete sucked back snot. "Isaac and I, we drove up to Vermont. This was back before the Supreme Court and everything, and only a few places were doing it. Our friends, other couples, they were putting rings on and doing this big show about the whole thing, and me, I didn't get it. The whole gay marriage thing, that kind of fight was never for me; I wanted to be quiet and left alone. But Isaac, he kept on and on how he wanted to get married. He said it was important. Plus, h
e said he wanted me to make an honest man out of him finally."

  Pete looked down at the ring. "I did my full thirty with the state police and spent the whole time hiding who I was," Pete said. "How the fuck would I ever tell those guys something like that?"

  "People are more accepting than they used to be," I said.

  "It's different when you wear a uniform. Different when you spend hour after hour in a patrol car with someone. Everything's attitude, about being a bigger bad ass than the other guy, and none of that mattered even if I could have kicked everyone's ass, because I would still be a faggot to them."

  Pete drank some of his beer. He still looked like a tomato with a crew cut, but the redness of his face was fading down to skin tone. "There're sodas in the refrigerator, too. I don't want you to think I'm a drunk or something. I guess I've been drinking more since—"

  I leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands together, thoughtful expression on my face. Someone might have mistaken me for someone who had a clue what the hell he was doing. "I need you to tell us what's going on with you and Isaac. Not just the basics, either. The whole thing."

  10

  "We've been together about two years," Pete said. "Isaac's younger, obviously. I don't have a thing for younger guys, anything like that. I'm not sure what I was thinking, getting involved with someone his age. Sometimes I feel like one of those sad old queers who thinks if he dates enough young guys, he'll never grow old. But you hit my age, there's not much in the dating pool worth shaving your balls for, so to speak, and Isaac all but came looking for me."

  Pete's fresh beer sat untouched on the nightstand. He folded his hands onto his lap. As he talked, he almost got younger before my eyes. We're talking Pete, though, so it was just degrees of Wilford Brimley, but still, it happened.

  "I drove up to Pittsburgh for a wine and jazz festival; the music was good, the wine less so," he said. "My friends rambled on about shit I didn't care about, and Isaac must have seen the boredom on my face, because he appeared from nowhere and struck up a conversation with me. Once my friends left and people cleared out, he and I got coffee and talked the rest of the night, and before I had blinked, it was morning.

  "Isaac's too pretty to be straight, but I never connected in my head him being interested in me. All we did all first night was talk. He was funny, and smart, and interesting. He talked about what he was doing with Cashbyte, and I didn't understand, but I didn't care, either. He asked me about being a cop, and when the sun rose, he kissed me and slipped me his business card and told me to call him. I fought it as long as I could. I put his card on my refrigerator and I stared at it for three days, every time I poured a glass of orange juice, or got a beer, that card stared back at me, demanding when I planned to sack up and do this thing. When I did, Isaac said, 'What the fuck took you so long?'"

  "How had he been acting the past few weeks?" I said. "Any weird behaviors? Anything different?"

  Pete nodded. "Everything started about a month ago, when he called me from work one day. He and his partners rent office space at a business park, and Isaac, he said he thought someone followed him as he drove in that morning. I asked him why, and he said he recognized this car, a Ford or a Chevy, he wasn't sure of which, but he was sure it followed him from the house to the office. I told him he was imagining things, cars all look alike these days, and I guess he was okay for a while, but then the next day he said the same thing happened.

  "So one day, after he left for work, I waited a minute or two, and then I followed him, and I noticed another car–a Ford–following him. The drive isn't a straight line, and if you're going from one to another, you're doing so for a reason. Then I tested the idea again, and this time, the car bailed out after a point, and another car picked up for a while, but then the first car showed back up, and it finished the drive all the way to Isaac's office."

  "This sounds like professionals," Woody said. "Tails with a team. They knew what they were doing."

  "Anything else weird?" I said.

  Pete said, "The last two weeks, I'd catch him on the phone, talking, but when I asked him who he was talking to, he got quiet, wouldn't say anything. He'd say it was Patrick or Vikram and then he'd try to steer into something else. He made it clear he didn't want to talk about the phone calls, and I'm not proud of this, but I went to check his call history on his phone when he was in the shower one day, and he had a lock on his phone. It was one where he needed to swipe a fingerprint across a scanner on the back, and I couldn't open it. He'd never had a lock before, and we had always talked about never having secrets."

  "Did you look at his cell phone bill?"

  "No. He keeps everything all online–he's so big on everything being paperless–and I didn't know the password. I never needed to because I always trusted him." His shoulder slumped forward, and it seemed something inside him had broken and he might collapse in on himself. "I'm sorry. I'm an old man, and I've never let myself be in this a situation, and now I'm clueless about what to do."

  Woody sat down next to Pete on the bed and put his hand on Pete's shoulder. "We'll help you find him."

  I smiled and said to Woody, "Can we step outside for a few?"

  We walked to the other side of the motel parking lot.

  "No way," I said. "This is a bad idea. This is personal with Pete, and it will be a disaster. That's a sensation in my fucking bones."

  Woody lit a cigarette. "He's your friend. You dragged me into this when you thought it was only money. Now you find out he's got a personal involvement, you're ready to cut and run?"

  I gestured for Woody to hand me the pack and his lighter. He slapped them into my hand and said, "You should try buying your own for once."

  "Why, when my friends keep letting me bum theirs?" I said. The first drag was relaxing and wonderful. I pushed the smoke out of my lungs. "When it was only about us making money, yes, I was good with working, because we weren't risking our lives for the love of someone's life."

  "So you're not okay with this being personal for Isaac. You'd rather he maybe loses this person he loves."

  I sucked in more smoke and exhaled. "When you put things like that, I sound like an asshole."

  "There's a reason you sound like an asshole, and that would be because you're an asshole."

  I scratched at my face. "I'm wondering how far Pete's willing to go, and will it be so far we end up getting killed." I held up my left hand. "Perhaps you remember having to stitch my hand back up. What's to say the McCoys don't have the same tendencies, and they lop off our thumbs? That’ll put a huge crimp in my Xbox habit."

  "Wouldn't happen. The McCoys, they'd cut your balls off."

  "Not making me feel better."

  "Not trying to. What I am saying is your friend is hurting in there, and what a sad fucking affair how I've known him 10 minutes and I'll go to bat for him, and you won't."

  Goddammit but I hated Woody sometimes. I hated when he was right. I hated he was so fucking loyal. He could almost put his dogs to shame that way.

  I finished my cigarette. "Let's tell him we'll do it."

  "Good lad."

  "Fuck you." I said and walked back toward Pete's room. I had my hand raised to knock on the door when I stopped and looked at Woody behind me. "You understand we won't get paid for this now? He'd have had to have pulled cash from his own pocket and neither one of us can take the money now."

  "Was never doing this for money anyway," Woody said.

  "Then why the hell were you doing it?"

  Woody jerked his chin toward the room. "Knock on the door," he said.

  11

  Woody and I made the eight a.m. St. Anthony's meeting the next morning. I didn't have much to say, and Woody said he was grateful to be sober and passed on to the next guy.

  I was sulking still from the night prior, less because Woody had won the argument and more because I had been open to throwing Pete and his problems under the bus. I didn't like what it said about me, my selfishness, or my lack of willingness to
risk.

  This could be simple. Perhaps we would find Isaac, and he and Pete would go home, and no one would get shot, for once. But I knew there was no way it would be simple. Nothing was simple for me these days.

  We picked Pete up and swung over to Tudor's for breakfast. Pete had eggs, biscuits, hash browns and bacon, while Woody had biscuits and gravy and told them to keep them coming until he said stop. I had an egg and cheese biscuit I picked at without doing much damage to.

  A waitress came by and refilled our coffee cups. Woody sipped on his. To Pete, he said, "So Isaac never talked to you about his family?"

  "Never," Pete said. "Early on he told me both of his parents died while he was in college. He didn't act like he had a lot of good memories about anyone."

  "That part could well be true. There's not a reputation for the McCoys being overrun with the milk of human kindness." Woody looked at Pete. "Isaac may have tried to run away from his family, from the history of his family and make himself out into someone new, but everyone has long shadows you can't avoid because you want to."

  "Meaning what?" Pete had his silverware in his hands, but he'd stopped eating, and held his knife and fork at the ready, his knuckles draining of blood as he pressed his fingers tighter into his palms.

  "Meaning you may not care much for the person we end up finding. He's not necessarily going to be the same person you're in love with."

  "I know who he is."

  "What if he won't go back?" I said.

  Pete looked at me as if I'd asked about swimming naked in a pool of marinara sauce. "Why wouldn't he?"

  "Because if he's hiding for a reason, it denotes he doesn't want found, and he might not want to come home."

  "Let me talk to him. Let me get the answers," Pete said. "Whatever they are, I'll take them, and move on from there."

  He said the words. Nothing implied he meant a single one.