by Gregory Ashe
“And,” Shaw said, “easy to damage permanently. A few more rounds with my partner, and you might not be able to close a padlock, or latch a dog crate, or snap a collar around a boy’s neck.” Shaw twisted the knife so that light shimmered along the blade. “That would be a real shame, wouldn’t it?”
“I can’t—” Brueckman was still spitting, trying to clear his mouth. “Look, I already sold his car, and if you want his money, you have to wait until Monday when I can make some phone calls—”
Shaw struggled to keep his face impassive. He struggled not to let the blitz of questions and possibilities show in his features. The semi-subterranean part of his brain that was always gathering data, collating it, sifting, processing, that part of his brain had suddenly whipped into a higher gear, and Shaw was trying to figure out why what Brueckmann said was so important. It had to do with Mark Sevcik’s Facebook page; Shaw knew that much.
North said, “You think we’re here for Mark Sevcik’s money. For his car.”
Brueckmann blinked up at them.
“You take everything,” Shaw said, the words falling out before he’d fully realized what he was saying. “Is that it?”
For a moment, the only noise was the tinny sound of an old man moaning on one of the many screens.
“All of it,” North said. “Right now.”
“Some people come to me,” Brueckmann said, head down. “They want something else. More than all this. They want somebody who’s really in control of them. They need it.”
“Men and women?” Shaw said.
“Only men.”
“And?”
“And I offer a service. I’m giving them something they need: stability, a fulfilling relationship, the kind of sexual satisfaction they could only dream about. I give them belonging. I give them a collar, and they put it around their necks.”
“For free?” North said. “You’re a generous guy. Must take a lot of time out of your day, making sure these people are pissing into diapers and keep their assholes shaved and are getting their nipples pierced and chained. A guy doing all that stuff might not have time to make a living.”
Brueckmann flushed, and his head snapped up, and for a moment, Shaw saw the man they had seen when they had walked into the office the first time: a man who took pleasure from controlling, from hurting, and it had fuck all to do with trust and healthy relationships.
“Look at me like that again,” North said, a lazy smile touching his ice-rim eyes, “and I’ll put your knife through your other hand. I told you I want all of it, so talk.”
Dropping his head, Brueckmann said, “They sign over everything to me. That’s part of the deal. That way, they’re fully committed. They’re getting what they want: absolute submission. I make sure they’re taken care of.”
“That’s why Sevcik was living in an apartment owned by your LLC.”
Brueckmann hesitated, and another realization flickered through Shaw.
“No,” Shaw said. “That was Mark Sevcik’s apartment. He owned it before he signed everything over to you. Is that right?”
Brueckmann nodded. “He must have kept a key. Or had one hidden. I don’t change the locks; it’s not worth the trouble.”
“So tell us about Mark Sevcik.”
“Mark came here a few months ago.”
“How many?” Shaw asked, but he already thought he knew the answer. Six. Six months ago. When everything had gone blank on Mark’s Facebook page.
“Five? Six? I’m not sure. He was like the rest of them: desperately unhappy, trying to figure out why all the things he worked so hard for didn’t make him feel any better. He was too much inside his own head. He was too inhibited. Too hung up. I told him I could help him.”
North glanced at Shaw; the look of disbelief on North’s face was almost comical. “And he agreed? He signed over everything to you? His house, his car, his bank accounts?”
“Of course. I wouldn’t have taken him as a sub if he hadn’t.”
“And then?” Shaw said.
“And then, a few months later, Mark changed his mind.”
Softball, Shaw thought. And then Dungeons and Dragons. And then e-sports. And then interior design.
“He wanted out. So I let him go.”
“And that was the end of it?” North said. “You just handed back the deed to his house, the keys to his car, wrote him a check, the end?”
Brueckmann didn’t answer.
“So this is a con,” North said.
“It’s not a con. Many of my subs stay permanently.”
“How many?”
Brueckmann didn’t answer again.
“And how many don’t stay? How many get six weeks in and are tired of getting their asses paddled, tired of giving you foot massages, tired of eating dog food out of a bowl on the ground while you eat steak, and they decide to leave?”
Still nothing but the wheezy, gasping moans of the old man on the screen. It had to be some kind of Guinness record, Shaw thought. Longest blowjob in the septuagenarian category.
“So people come to you. They give you everything. And when they leave, it’s so long, good luck. That’s a fucking question so fucking open your mouth and answer.”
“It’s all legal. They have to sign a contract. They see a psychiatrist first who confirms they’re mentally sound. There are witnesses. It’s not my fault if they have second thoughts.”
“You’re a fucking con man and a fucking sadist is what you are. Explain tonight. Everything from the minute your boy Jeremy heard Mark’s name.”
Brueckmann looked up again, mouth tightening. “I thought he had hired you to extort money out of me. The contracts are completely legal, so the police can’t do anything, and you two . . .” A faint sneer crossed his face. “You obviously aren’t lawyers. When you came up here, when you assaulted me, I decided to handle things personally.”
“We obviously aren’t lawyers?” Shaw said. “What do you think he means by that, North?”
“He’s talking about you and those ridiculous pants.”
“I think he’s talking about you. Were you still wearing your hard hat when we came in here?”
“No, I knew it would be a boner magnet, so I left it in the car. It’s probably your hair.”
“Some lawyers have long hair.”
“Yeah, but a lawyer would buy real conditioner instead of trying to make it out of rape oil.”
“Rapeseed oil. You can’t leave off the seed part.”
“You’re the one who ripped off half the label and left it out so Pari found a fucking bottle of rape oil on your nightstand.”
Brueckmann’s eyes pinged back and forth between them. A hard smile hooked one side of his mouth.
“If you’re thinking about how Shaw would look in a collar,” North said, “join the club. He’d look fucking fantastic in one.”
All of the sudden, Shaw was having a hard time getting enough oxygen.
North continued, saying, “But now I want to hear the non-bullshit version of tonight’s events.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about how you might have believed Mark sent a couple of toughs here to get money out of you, but that was at the beginning. That was when Jeremy wasn’t going to bring us upstairs. Everything changed the minute my partner mentioned the video.”
Brueckmann’s whole body tensed. He was looking at the floor again, and the lines in his jaw stood out. One eye twitched. Part of him, Shaw recognized, was bracing for the pain, expecting North to twist the pen in his hand again. But part of him was bracing against something else. Something that terrified him a great deal more.
“The video,” Shaw said. “The recording of you. Who has it?”
Shaw knew he was right as soon as he said it. His words speared Brueckmann, and the dom stiffened, his eyes up and locked onto Shaw before Brueckmann could bring himself back under control.
“You don’t know,
” Shaw said.
“No.”
“How long have they been blackmailing you?”
“A few weeks.”
“What’s on the video?” North asked.
“Fuck you.”
“Buddy, I know it’s not the role you usually play, but you’re the one who’s about to get fucked.” North reached for the pen.
Shaw stopped him. He could see where some of the pieces of this puzzle touched: Brueckmann’s posture, his fear, the old man moaning on one of the screens while a kid blew him, North’s offhand comment about Shaw in a collar, and, of course, the video of Matty Fennmore losing his virginity. Shaw waited another moment, tracing the shadow of the idea, and then he trusted it enough to say it out loud.
“You sub.”
This time, Brueckmann’s reaction was more intense. He tried to get to his feet, his face so furious and afraid that the pain of jostling his injured hand didn’t seem to reach him. He reached for the pen with his other hand, obviously planning on yanking it free and attacking again.
North’s fist met Brueckmann’s right eye about two seconds later. The explosion of the punch rippled through Brueckmann’s face like it was cold jelly, and Brueckmann wobbled, his whole body blank, wiped clean by North’s punch. Then Brueckmann collapsed, half his body supported by the desk, half of it trailing off onto the floor.
As Brueckmann wheezed and gasped and tried to recover, North worked his way around the desk, planting himself behind Brueckmann, gathering a handful of the older man’s hair, and yanking his head back.
“So,” North said. “Sometimes you like to wear a collar. Sometimes you like to have your ass beaten. Big deal.”
“Everybody likes a nice spank now and then,” Shaw said.
And for some inexplicable reason, North’s cheeks heated at that, but he maintained the easy back and forth without missing a beat. “Maybe some guys like it a little bit more.”
“Maybe some guys like a choke collar.”
“Yeah, that’d be nice,” North said. “Maybe some guys like those dog suits. Like to get paraded around with a silicone tail sticking out of their ass.”
“You know what, North?”
“What’s that, Shaw?”
“Lee Brueckmann’s a big old dom top, you know?”
“Oh, I know. He’s wearing a leather jacket. That’s like a billboard.”
“Maybe he wants to wag his little puppy tail, though.”
“Him?” North punctuated the word by slamming Brueckmann’s head into the desk. Then, pulling it back up, he examined Brueckmann’s bloody face. “No. No fucking way. A big dom top like this guy? But Shaw, he makes all his money getting other people to wag their puppy-dog tails.”
Dropping into Brueckmann’s seat, Shaw kicked his feet up onto the desk. “That would be a big problem. Wouldn’t it, Lee? You don’t mind if I call you Lee, do you? Because, Lee, here’s the problem as I see it. Maybe you like a nice big dick slapping you in the face. Maybe you like it when somebody else holds the reins—”
“Or the dog chow,” North offered.
“Or the dog chow. Maybe you like it when a total stranger rips your hole apart, beats your ass bloody, and then flushes you like a come-soaked tissue. But here’s the problem: that doesn’t pay the bills, does it?”
“Fuck,” Brueckmann said through split lips, blood running down his chin. “You.”
“No, Lee. You’re the one who’s fucked. Because if you don’t tell me what I want to hear, we’re going to strip you of that butch leather jacket, and we’re going to slap a collar on you, and we’re going to cram you in one of your dog crates, and we’re going to take a lot of pictures. And I’m not really a photographer, but North does a great job. He really gets it, you know? Light and shadow. Angles. So he’s going to make sure you look your absolute best as a cock-hungry hound who just needs somebody to dominate the shit out of him.”
Lee Brueckmann wheezed bloody breaths, his eyes fixed in furious hate on Shaw.
“I thought you knew what to do with me,” North said, tightening his fist in Brueckmann’s hair hard enough that Brueckmann’s eyes welled.
“Fine,” Brueckmann said, and he hocked a bloody loogie onto the desk. “Fine, get your fucking hands off me.”
“I think I’ll stay right here,” North said. “You like having your hair pulled, I bet, so I’m just going to provide the ultimate customer experience.”
“We really do try to go the extra mile,” Shaw said. “Now, let’s hear it.”
“There’s a video. Supposedly. I was a kid. I was new to the scene. I’m not into that shit, no matter what you say, but I was still trying to figure things out. I didn’t even know the fucker had recorded it. It was a one-night thing, and after we both got off, I went home, and that was the end of it. The end. It wasn’t my thing.”
“Course not,” North said.
“Not a big, butch guy like you,” Shaw said.
“Fuck both of you, ok? Fuck you, you big fucking troll, and fuck you, you fucking twinkie with a face like fucking roadkill—”
North slammed Brueckmann’s face into the desk so hard that Shaw actually heard his nose break. Brueckmann gave a wet scream, and when North pulled him up by the hair, his face was a disaster zone.
“Try that again,” North said. “We want the rest of it. Politely.”
For a long moment, Brueckmann sputtered blood, and he might have stayed that way except North yanked on his hair again. Then Brueckmann hissed out a breath, shook himself, and said, “Fine. Fine. That was it, one night. But last week, I got an email. To my private account. And it just had a few short sentences describing what had happened. He told me he had the video.” Brueckmann gave a short, bewildered laugh. “I mean, I don’t even remember the guy. No name. He had a goatee, that’s all I remember, because it tickled. It didn’t even seem real at first.” He shook his head. “This guy comes out of nowhere. This one guy, this one time. And he wants two thousand dollars every two weeks. Do you know how much fucking money that is?”
“Four thousand dollars a month,” Shaw said.
“Forty-eight thousand a year.”
“Fifty-two,” Shaw said. “There are fifty-two weeks a year.”
“Right. I know that.”
“Well, you didn’t calculate it that way. It probably just slipped your mind. You were probably thinking in terms of a construction site budget. You were probably thinking about how much steel you could buy, or how many cement trucks you could use. That’s ok. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“How many fucking cement trucks I could get? What the fuck, Shaw?”
“I mean, you are the one who worked construction growing up. And in college. It’s kind of a compliment.”
“A fucking compliment? That’s your idea of a fucking compliment, you fucking yoga pretzel? I’m the one who graduated college, Shaw.”
“Why do you get to call him a fucking yoga pretzel,” Brueckmann muttered, “and I can’t even say he’s—”
“Shut up,” North said, shaking him by the hair.
“Look,” Shaw said. “I didn’t mean anything by it. It’s cute, really. You just didn’t think about how many weeks there are in the year. You were probably thinking about how many pieces of rebar you need for—
“I’m the one who graduated. Not you. Me. I’m the college graduate.”
“I know. And that degree in construction management is absolutely adorable.”
North was breathing through his nose. “Keep pushing this, Shaw. Keep poking me.”
“I’ve got a fucking pen through my hand,” Brueckmann bitched. “I’ve got a fucking broken nose. If you two are done—”
“We were kind of in the middle of something,” North said. “Don’t you know it’s rude to interrupt?”
“You’re very smart,” Shaw said.
“Damn right.”
“And you’re amazing at your job. At every job you’ve had, in fa
ct.”
“I absolutely fucking am.”
“And if I were hiring a guy to mix cement, I swear to God, I’d really take a good, long look at your resume.”
North stared at him. His nostrils were white when they flared with each breath. “All right,” he said. “You made your fucking bed, Shaw. I warned you.”
Shaw grinned at him and spread his hands.
“I don’t get why you two are—” Brueckmann began.
“Is that all?” Shaw said to him.
“What?” Brueckmann gave another bloody sputter. “I mean, yeah.”
“How’d you pay?”
“I don’t. I said I wanted proof. The guy never emailed me back. The end.”
“Do you have any idea who it was?” North asked. “And don’t lie to me. I’m at the end of my fucking rope because of this asshat in hemp pants, so don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it.”
“I don’t know. Honest to God, I don’t. Not even a clue.”
Shaw and North exchanged a glance. Shaw shrugged. Then he ripped the pen out of Brueckmann’s hand. Brueckmann screamed and fell backward.
Dragging Brueckmann by the hair, North moved toward the back room. Shaw followed, watching Brueckmann gag and moan and howl and try to dig in his heels, but North just kept going. And then they reached the row of wire crates, and North shoved Brueckmann into one at the end.
Brueckmann curled up inside it. North grabbed the hose, tied it through the crate’s door, and then gave the crate a good, whalloping shake.
“You look good in there, Lee. Hope the right person finds you.”
“I’m going to find you. I’m going to do things to you that—”
North spoke over him. “Things nobody can imagine, things nobody can dream of, blah, blah, blah. Night, Brueckmann.”
Then North opened the door onto the fire escape, leaning against the jamb while he waited for Shaw. The humid chill of the April night brushed Shaw’s cheek, and he tasted the rust from the fire escape and the animal smell of North’s Red Wings.
