Orientation (Borealis Investigations Book 1)

by Gregory Ashe

  “Right now, Regina. Or Mistress Minerva and the rest are going to start hearing some very ugly rumors. I can be pretty loud.”

  “When he sings in the shower,” Shaw said, shuddering. “He likes Britney so damn much.”

  For a moment, Regina said nothing. Then, pressing her two-inch-long nails—flamingo pink—to her cheeks, she seemed to come to some sort of decision. She nodded. She wobbled again on her heels. And then she tottered along the stage toward the curtains.

  They followed her into a cramped dressing room, the vanity covered with cosmetics and cotton balls and, for some reason North couldn’t understand, tampons. Lightbulbs surrounded the mirror, and they were the only source of illumination, throwing sharp, horizontal shadows across North and Shaw and Regina. She gathered a pile of cotton balls in her lap and began picking them apart with her long nails.

  “I’m only telling you—” She shivered, pulling at the spaghetti straps of her sequined flamingo-pink dress. “I’m only telling you because it doesn’t matter anymore. I’m broke. He knows I’m broke. And whenever he gets tired of pushing me around, he’s going to do it. He’s going to—I don’t know. Release it. Stream it. Broadcast it. And then it’ll all be over.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Whoever he is. The guy who’s got the video. The guy who keeps squeezing me.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know.” She threw a half-picked cotton ball on the ground and started another. “It’s not like we’re friends. I’ve got no idea who he is. And trust me, I’ve tried. I’ve—I’ve asked around. I’ve called in favors. I’ve tried everything.”

  “What’s the video of?” Shaw asked.

  Regina’s nails froze in the midst of fluffing another shredded piece of cotton. “How much do you know about drag?”

  Shaw shrugged. “A little.”

  North shook his head. “Not much.”

  “It’s an act, right? A performance? This—” Regina touched the platinum wig, then the falsies, then the sequined flamingo dress. She flexed her hands to display the two-inch-long nails. “This is all costumery. You can buy this at any beauty shop on Gravois. Just walk inside, pick up the same wig, the same nails, the same plastic tits. Ok, well, the tits might be a special purchase. But the rest of it, it comes off the rack. There are queens who spend fortunes on custom wigs, on custom dresses, on custom everything. And do you know who cares about those queens? Do you know who drives across three states to see them? Nobody. Because those queens think drag is about the clothes and the hair and the best tits and the tightest tuck. They don’t know that drag is a performance. It’s a lie. And the best liar, that’s the one everyone comes back to see. That’s the one that’ll make a guy drive across three states while his wife and kids are safe in bed. That’s what makes Regina into Regina Rex.”

  “So?”

  “So,” Regina said, her voice dropping into a husky mimicry of North’s and then slipping back into falsetto, “sweetie, it’s an illusion. Break that illusion, and Regina Rex is gone. Bye, bye, Regina. Like that.” She snapped her fingers, and another mutilated cotton ball drifted to the floor.

  “You still haven’t told us what the video is of.”

  “It’s of me.” Her voice slipped again. “Tony Montgomery. Inside Lady Adderall Bites dressing room at Miss Opportunity’s, which is one of the best drag clubs in Vegas. And it shows me doing something that I shouldn’t have done.”

  North spread his hands and waited.

  “It was the 2008 Vegas Drag Race, and we were the finalists. I ripped some of the stitches in her dress. Lady Adderall Bites loves—loved, I guess—to do splits. The whole dress, the whole thing, it just popped right off when she went into her signature move. Somebody else might have pulled it off, made it look like it was on purpose, but she was so freaked out that she started crying and ran off stage. And I won.”

  “And what happened to Lady Adderall Bites?”

  Regina cocked her head, her blond tresses whispering against the back of her chair, and shredded another cotton ball. “Do you mean, is she behind all of this? Some sort of revenge?”

  “I’m just asking what happened to her.”

  “She stayed on the circuit for a few more years. I don’t really know. I moved home, and I lost track of her.” Her flamingo nails took in the dressing room, parroting shadows against the wall in the harsh, horizontal light. “I had the crown. I had a reputation. St. Louis had clubs but it didn’t have Regina Rex and it didn’t have anything like this. What I’m going to do with the Lucky, what it’s going to be when I’m done, it’s going to make San Francisco look like the Deep South. The gays are going to scream their way to St. Louis just for a chance to be inside the Lucky.”

  “How much?”

  Regina flicked another cotton ball, and this one caught North on the cheek. “Sweetie, you don’t just come out and ask a lady a question like that.”

  “How much, Regina?”

  “Five hundred dollars a month.”

  “That’s—” Shaw began, and then he stopped.

  North could feel the other man’s tension. Could feel his own tension.

  Regina shook her long hair again. “That’s not very much? Child, maybe private detectives make more money than I thought, but for an old queen, five hundred dollars is a lot.”

  “You have the Lucky,” North said.

  “I have a small business loan, and I have an outrageous interest rate, and I have shows to put on. I sleep here. Did you know that? Not here, this room, but in the theater. This is everything. This is all I have. I gave up the apartment. I have amateurs running sound and lights because I can’t pay a professional. And if I have to pay five hundred dollars a month to keep from losing it, well, baby, I’ll keep buying my wigs on Gravois.”

  “Teddi told me you’ve received generous donations. Gifts to help you renovate.” North kept his gaze steady and waited.

  “It’s gone. All the money. I had to pay the bastard who was blackmailing me somehow, didn’t I? And then there were permits, hoops to jump through. It all goes somewhere.”

  “Teddi said you’d already gotten the permits. He made it sound like everything got fast-tracked.”

  “As I said,” Regina stated in a flat voice. “That money all went somewhere.”

  “How long has this been going on?” Shaw asked.

  “Years, sweetie. Years.”

  “Since you moved back?”

  Regina dropped the cotton balls, and they tumbled off her lap, rolling across the floor to gather dust and lint and fragments of a broken cake of blush. She studied Shaw, pinching the spaghetti straps with her long flamingo nails, adjusting the dress, breathing deeply. “Well, well, well. Shaw, baby. I’m hurt.”

  Red lines cut along Shaw’s ridiculously high cheekbones. “Since you moved back, Regina?”

  “You could have called me. You could have at least let me make a counteroffer.”

  The red deepened to purple, but Shaw’s voice remained the same. “Before? While you were still in Vegas?”

  “I hope he was worth it, child, because you only get one first.”

  North exploded out of his chair, launching himself at Regina, but Regina was, by some miracle, faster. Regina spun out of the chair, shoving it at North and catching him at the knees with it, causing him to stumble, fold forward, his chest cracking across the back of the chair. At the same time Regina’s hand lashed out, raking open four deep furrows on North’s cheek. She danced back. North righted himself, kicked the chair clear of his path, and took a step.

  But only one. Because Shaw had a grip on his jacket and yanked him back a step.

  “Cool it,” was all Shaw said, two whip-crack words.

  The three of them stood there. The slashes on North’s cheek stung, and he could feel blood drip hot lines down to his jaw, run toward his chin, bead, fall. A heavy drop spattered on the toe of his Red Wings.

  “I learned a long time a
go,” Regina said, her eyes bright, her chest rising and falling. “I learned how to deal with macho fags like you a long time ago, sweetie.”

  “Talk to him again like that,” North said. “Look at him again like that.”

  “Enough.” Shaw actually shook North by the collar that time. “How long has someone been blackmailing you, Regina?”

  On stage, the noise muted through the closed door of the dressing room, someone was singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” while a remixed, electronic version of the tune blasted through the theater.

  “Let’s go,” Shaw said.

  Regina’s face was still shining with that same wild exhilaration, her eyes still like neutron stars off in deep space. Her breathing was still sheared off in huge, uneven gulps. But her voice was even as she said, “Ever since I bought the Lucky.”

  “Fine. North, let’s get out of here.”

  Chapter 22

  Ow. Owwww. Ow. Ow. Ow. For fuck’s sake, Shaw, fucking—owwwwwww.”

  When North reached up to try to bat Shaw’s hand away, Shaw grabbed his wrist and shoved the arm back down. Then Shaw tried some of the breathing exercises that Dr. Farr had given him. In. Hold. Slow release. In. Hold. Slow release. As he breathed, he dabbed at the cuts on North’s face with a Q-tip and iodine, while North was busy being the biggest baby outside of the closest NICU.

  But breathing wasn’t helping. He kept jabbing with the Q-tip instead of dabbing. He kept jabbing. He kept jabbing. He kept jabbing and swabbing and using way more iodine than necessary. And since breathing wasn’t helping, Shaw tried his visualizations. He pictured himself as an observer standing on the edge of the road. He pictured his rage as this enormous fire truck barreling past him. He could see the fire truck in all its vibrant red. He could feel the fire truck in the cyclone of loose stones and debris stirred by its passage, in the wall of air that flattened against him and made it hard to breathe. He could feel all of that and still be separate from it, an observer. He could witness his own anger without being part of it.

  Except he just. Kept. Fucking. Jabbing. Because North had gone apeshit twice. Because, even though Shaw had liked North’s protectiveness for all these years, today there was something off about it. There was something wrong about it. It was so fucking primitive. It was so fucking possessive.

  “Owwwwwwwwwwww. Enough.” North squirmed off the toilet and backed away so fast that he almost fell into the bathtub. He raised both hands. “I’ll talk. I’ll talk. I’ll tell you when the Allies are planning their attack. I’ll give you the plans for the nuclear space laser. I’ll have your babies.”

  “You.” Shaw stabbed a finger at North’s chest. “Fucking.” Another stab. “Suck.”

  “Jesus, all right.” North swiped at Shaw’s hand and caught it, his calloused fingers wrapping tightly around Shaw’s, the touch just rough enough to send the old, familiar chill down Shaw’s spine. But the bandage across the back of his hand, where the leather strap had split the skin, only sparked Shaw’s anger all over again. “I suck,” North said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lost my temper.”

  “Not when we’re in the middle of an important interview.”

  “Not when we’re in the middle of an important interview.”

  “Not when a suspect is obviously trying to push my buttons.”

  “Not when a suspect is obviously trying to push my buttons.”

  “Not when we’re running up against dead ends everywhere in this fucking case.”

  “Not when we’re running up against dead ends everywhere in this fucking case.”

  “Will you stop that?” Shaw tried to wrest his hand free. “And let me go.”

  North clung on. “Will you stop that? And let me go.”

  With a sigh, Shaw tossed the Q-tip into the trash and stared past North. They had opened the bathroom window, and the April air carried in the smell of maple trees blooming and rust from the fire escape and, because today the breeze had shifted, the hops from the Anheuser-Busch brewery. It all mixed with the iodine and with those typical North fragrances: Irish Spring soap and American Crew and the animal leather smell of his Red Wings. It smelled like home.

  Shaw tried again to get his hand back, but North didn’t let go. “You know, a lot of guys have insulted me, ok? It’s not like I’m made of glass. It’s not like I’m worried just because a few people make fun of how I look.”

  Shaw waited for North’s echo, but North didn’t speak this time.

  A pigeon fluttered down, and the fire escape chimed under its talons. North released Shaw’s hand.

  “That’s because,” North said, pinching Shaw’s cheeks like some kind of manic grandmother, “you know you’re just such a pretty boy. Don’t you?” He gave a playful shake of Shaw’s head, still pinching his cheek. “You do, don’t you? You do. You know you’re a pretty boy. You do, you do, you do—”

  Shaw was laughing—against his will, but laughing—as he pulled back and slapped away North’s touch. “You are an absolute idiot, you know that?”

  “I know.”

  “You probably ate paint chips when you were a kid.”

  North took a step toward him. “Yep. Lead paint. My parents would sprinkle them in the crib at snacktime.”

  Something about North’s movement startled Shaw, and he retreated. “You were probably dropped on your head.”

  North took another step. “My mom apologized for that about a hundred times.”

  Shaw took another step back, but North caught his wrist. Shaw couldn’t move. He felt like he was hanging from a power line. Somehow he managed to say, “You probably got kicked by a horse.”

  North was close enough that the smell of American Crew and good leather seemed overpowering. He smiled, and the cuts on his cheek started bleeding again. “That’s about the only reason that could explain why I like you so much.”

  And then he placed a bandage in Shaw’s hand and raised his eyebrows.

  “Oh. Right. Sorry.”

  “It’s ok. Sometimes I like it when you chew my ass.”

  “And you deserved it.”

  “And I deserved it.”

  Shaw affixed the bandage and studied North, turning his head gently with a touch to his chin. “Tucker’s going to be pissed.”

  North opened his mouth. Shaw could feel the silence cracking between them like a frozen river. And then the pigeon took flight with a clap of wings, and the fire escape groaned. North shut his mouth and shrugged.

  “North,” Shaw began.

  “Have you heard from Matty?”

  Shaw dropped his hand. “No. Pari said he left this morning.” He took a step back, and then another, and then he left the bathroom.

  It was a long time before North followed.

  In their office, Shaw worked at his MacBook, trawling through the public view of Mark Sevcik’s Facebook page again. There were the early pictures with the Cardinals jersey. Then the softball pictures. Then the Dungeons and Dragons posts. Xbox. E-sports. Interior design. And then a blank space. Then the love of his life and his new passion as a sound engineer.

  Shaw hesitated. Something bubbled in the underwater portion of his brain, and he grabbed a pad of paper, began sketching. This kind of thing—a kind of free association activity that combined drawing and writing, what North had once described as “that fuck-ugly doodling you did on my diploma”—always seemed to help Shaw uncover the sunken, hidden realizations happening in his subconscious. So he let his hand move, and he let his brain drift.

  Six months ago. What had happened six months ago? That answer came easily enough—a slight hiccup interrupted Shaw’s scribbles, and then his hand resumed. Six months ago, Mark Sevcik had decided he wanted to be a sub. So he’d gone to Lee Brueckmann. He’d signed over everything. And then, a few months later, in typical Mark Sevcik behavior, he realized that being a sub wasn’t the transformational, totally satisfying experience he had hoped, and he’d decided to leave.


  And that was when Mark Sevcik reappeared on Facebook and announced that he had met the love of his life.

  So who was the love of his life? And how did Matty’s story—with Mark picking him up in a bar, manipulating him, and blackmailing him—fit in with the rest of Mark’s history? Hell, how did blackmail fit into any of Mark’s story?

  North stood up so suddenly that the casters on his chair chirped across the uneven boards. He stretched. His shirt rode up, exposing an inch of heavily muscled torso. And then, of course, he tugged the shirt down and caught Shaw’s eye.

  “Pervert.”

  “I was trying to figure out if that stain on your ass was from wet cement or from drywall.”

  “It’s from a quiche Tuck was making. I sat on the counter and smashed the crust. And you shouldn’t be staring at my ass; you’re a taken man, now.”

  Shaw’s hand was suddenly moving much faster, flying blindly across the page as he turned his attention back to the computer.

  “I’m going to check out Mark’s last place of employment,” North said with another long stretch; Shaw could feel his eyes like the jaws of a trap.

  “Oh boy. Sexy gym bunny?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Sexy insurance adjuster?”

  “Not this time.”

  “Sexy corporate fraud investigator?”

  “I had to lend someone my clipboard.”

  “So that leaves sexy UPS guy.”

  “I have other ideas.”

  “Oh, sure. You have sexy plumber. And sexy HVAC repairman. And sexy guy who lost his dog. And sexy burrito roller.”

  North burst out laughing at the last one. “That was one time.” Then, trying to make his expression stern, he said, “They’re not all sexy.”

  “Sexy burrito roller literally licked refried beans off his finger trying to seduce that dentist we were following.”

  “It worked, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah, and you caused a grade-four food hazard.”