by Gregory Ashe
North waited.
A dog barked furiously on the street for fifteen seconds.
North was still waiting.
The dog yelped, the sound fading into the distance, and then the bell on the Kaldi’s door chirped.
North was still, still waiting.
“You know what?” Shaw said. “I think I remembered that wrong. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard the name of a single Star Trek character. Ever.”
North grunted in approval and then squatted to examine the closest pile of clothes. “This is schizophrenic,” he said, touching first the cleats, then the snakeskin boots, then the wizard staff, then the flapper dress. “This is beyond schizo.”
“I don’t think we’re supposed to say stuff like that anymore. Especially not schizo.”
“What do you call a guy with like fifteen different personalities in his closet? And don’t make a lame gay-in-the-closet joke, please.”
“Low hanging fruit,” Shaw said. He stepped back, and then back again until he could see everything—including the bulge of North’s powerful thighs, which the short shorts did nothing to conceal. “It’s like his Facebook page.”
North cocked his head.
“He went through phases. Finance bro.” Shaw pointed to the business casual clothes. “Fratty softball guy.” He nudged the jerseys. “Video games—Xbox, I think—and—”
“Wizard?” North said sourly, holding up the broken wand.
“Dungeons and Dragons.”
“Didn’t you play—”
“And drag, I guess.” Shaw held up the flapper dress. “It might fit me.”
“Of course it would fit you. You’ve got no hips.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s not a compliment. What about this?” North pinched the stained Hog Hollow t-shirt and lifted it clear of the pile before dropping it again.
“Redneck phase?”
“Gays don’t go through redneck phases.”
“I don’t know. The cowboy thing, that’s kind of hot.”
“Really?”
“Well, I mean—”
“Because that would explain the leather chaps you’ve got in your dresser.”
Shaw was pretty sure he swallowed a fly because he was suddenly choking on something.
“All three pairs.”
Yep. Yep. Definitely a fly. Shaw pounded on his chest, trying to get his throat open, trying to get some air.
“I mean, it’s not really my thing,” North was saying. “But maybe Matty’s into it.”
“He’s not—I wouldn’t have—”
North’s face was innocent, eyebrows raised.
“They’re not mine,” Shaw finally managed to say.
“You’re just holding them for a friend.”
“Exactly.”
North stood and examined the piles of clothing again. “Somebody’s been in here, right? and we’ve got a narrow pool of suspects. Matty has been here. He told us that.”
“He said he couldn’t find his way back here.”
“He might be lying.” Before Shaw could protest, North continued, “Brueckmann knew where Mark lived. Hell, he owns the place. Regina—damn. Regina didn’t know.”
“Not necessarily,” Shaw said. “Regina was at Teddi’s brunch. She might have overheard what you and Teddi talked about. Or she might have asked Teddi later. It’s not like Teddi’s a vault, you know.”
“So she could have come here too.”
“And we know Barr and Reck were here. So that’s our five.”
“Do you think someone found the recording?”
North shrugged. He was staring at the clothes. “Two jerseys. One wizard robe. A lot of t-shirts with fucking Voltron—”
“I’m sorry, what was that?”
“—and then work clothes. He needed to keep his closet organized.”
“Not necessarily. I’ve never organized my closet.”
“You live in a house entirely by yourself. And you’re a fucking pig.”
“Hey.”
North shrugged. “This guy had a boyfriend—you don’t—and this guy had hobbies—you don’t—and this guy had a limited income—you don’t.”
“Hey!”
“So he had to prioritize. He had to organize his closet.” North pointed to the jerseys. “Most importantly, he had to downsize. The oldest stuff is what he has the least of. Every time he got a new idea, he had to pare back, and the oldest stuff was probably the first to go. Drag. Jerseys and cleats. Wizard robe. That’s the oldest stuff. The stuff he was into more recently—God only knows why he picked fucking Voltron—”
Shaw cleared his throat.
“—there’s a lot more of. And the work clothes. He was still working until a few months ago, so he’s got to have work clothes.”
“What about these?” Shaw asked, bending to pick up the Hog Hollow Hocks shirt.
“Pigs and Pups. That’s what’s leftover from when he was Brueckmann’s pet, at least, that’s what I think. The pig, get it? He’s Brueckmann’s pig.”
Shaw rubbed the cotton between his fingers. It was soft from repeated washings. He brought it to his nose. Breathed. And when he lowered the shirt, he was grinning.
“Perv,” North said. “I should have let Brueckmann keep you in that kennel.”
“I was the one who got out first, for the record. And I didn’t have to kick my way out like an old mule.”
“Like an old—”
Before North could finish, Shaw tossed the shirt, and it caught North in the face. North swore, grabbed the garment, and then froze. When he pulled the shirt away, he said, “Barbeque sauce.”
“I don’t think that’s leftover from his sub phase,” Shaw said. “I think that’s leftover from whoever Mark Sevcik was before he started trying on all these different personalities. I think this is good old boy Mark’s favorite barbeque joint. And to judge by the boots and the jeans and t-shirt, he went back a lot. Maybe he felt like he could actually be himself. Or maybe even that was starting to become a role.”
“That’s some pretty lousy armchair psychology.”
“Lucky for me, I get paid by the hour.”
North dropped the shirt and started tapping on his phone. “Would you believe Hog Hollow Hocks, Loins, and Ribs is a barbeque joint out in Chesterfield?”
“Chesterfield? Not Affton? Or Arnold? Or Crystal City?”
“People in Chesterfield like barbeque too. Let’s go take a look.”
“I’ll drive,” Shaw said. “Please?”
Chapter 24
Hog Hollow Hocks, Loins, and Ribs was a neatly painted building—red with white trim—that had obviously been designed to remind people of a barn or a farmhouse or something in that vein. The Mercedes purred as they pulled into the lot, which was more than half full even at this hour on a Saturday night, and North had to squash an ember of jealousy. As soon as business picked up, he told himself, he’d get a car. As soon as there was a little more money. Of course, there was always plenty of money when Tuck wanted something, but—
“If he’s in there,” North said, “I’ll flush him out. You wait here and keep an eye out.”
“We’ve done this before,” Shaw said with a lazy smile and a roll of his eyes.
And they had done this before. Plenty of times. Back when business was good, back before Marvin Hanson, when the only thing North had to hide were a few bruises when Tuck had a little too much to drink and got frisky. North nodded, and he slipped out of the Mercedes. Shaw kept driving, pulling around to the side of the building.
On his phone, North pulled up a picture of Mark Sevcik—he could have passed for any of a million finance bros, his dark hair swept up, his blue eyes—and fixed it in his memory. Then he stepped into the rodeo chaos of Hog Hollow Hocks. A jukebox blasted a bluegrass song, with an agonizingly long banjo riff, but the volume of the music barely competed with the shouts and laughter and conversation. The barb
eque joint was full—and probably seventy percent of the customers were men. Many of them were older men, sitting on stools at the bar, or standing in little triangles and clinking brown bottles together, or crowded into corner booths and stretching across the table to reach a pitcher and refill their glasses. The air smelled like cooking pork, like hot fat rendering, and something else. Earthier. North took a step, and his Red Wings stirred up sawdust. That was the other smell.
A petite girl with Rapunzel hair trotted toward him, but North waved her off and shouted something about a friend. Then he plunged into the maelstrom of noise and beer and ribs. He saw a one-eyed man kissing a stuffed pig that was mounted on the wall. He saw two women pressed against each other, bottles squeezed between their cleavage as they tried to drink without using their hands. He saw an old man racking pool balls and felt a moment’s pity for the pair of ginger brothers who were waiting to play with the old man, cash already folded on the side of the pool table; those boys were about to get taken.
North wasn’t sure the last time he’d eaten, and his stomach rumbled as he walked the length of the barbeque joint. He doubled back, made a second check, and then looked for the perky little Rapunzel. She was busy talking to a group of old men, who were laughing and staring down her shirt and probably telling her she reminded them of their granddaughters. Another woman, this one starting to sag, gave North a weary wave from the corner of the bar.
“Do you do takeout?”
She nodded.
“A full rack of ribs, please. No sauce. And whatever sides you like the best. And—do you have a plastic bag?”
She blinked. Her lash extensions had started to peel away, and they did a kind of wavering second blink from the momentum. Then she nodded.
When she brought the food back, North showed her the picture.
“Marky? What do you want him for?”
“I was supposed to meet him for dinner. You know him?”
“He’s been in here once a week since he was a baby, I guess. You got your schedule mixed up, hon. He was here last night.” An excited roar went up as a fight broke out on the other side of the room; the old man had snapped a pool cue over one of the ginger boys’ head, and the other brother was squaring off. “Lord, Darnell will kill both of them. Excuse me.”
“Was he with anybody?”
“No, Marky almost always eats by himself.”
North left cash and a decent tip—Matty was paying, after all—and carried the food outside. He circled the building, passing under the security lights where a few mayflies, early this year, bobbed and danced. Shaw stood just off the asphalt pad where the shadows were thick enough to hide him, and he had his arms wrapped around himself.
“Oh,” he said. “That smells good.”
“I had a hard time finding something on your diet.”
“On our diet, North. We’re both doing it.”
“I know you’re trying to cut out dairy.”
“We’re trying to cut it out, North. Both of us.”
“But I thought something simple would still be ok. Simple is still ok, right? No toxins, nothing processed. Definitely no dairy. Plant-based.”
“You didn’t get any sauce, did you?”
North had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling. This was what everybody else missed when they dealt with Shaw. If they saw this part of him, this total authenticity that made him shine like a light through the best glass, they only glanced at it. Nobody, for some reason, had ever noticed how that authenticity gave Shaw an excitement for life, an energy, an eagerness that was totally genuine and, as far as North had encountered, unique in this world. Sometimes it was like electricity. Sometimes, like tonight, it could make the hairs on North’s arms stand up, even if he told himself it was only the cold. Somehow nobody else noticed, though.
Matty noticed, a dark voice whispered inside North.
He scrubbed out the voice; tonight, it was just the two of them, doing what they did best. North was allowed to enjoy that.
He pulled out the ribs and two paper cartons with the sides—mac and cheese and black-eyed peas—and tossed the bag to Shaw. Shaw grinned as he pulled it open and reached inside.
Drawing out his hand, Shaw shook out some of the sawdust that North had packed inside the bag. “Simple?”
“It doesn’t get much simpler.”
“Plant-based?”
“Locally sourced from an oak tree named Harold. He lived on a tree farm forty miles north of here. His favorite weather was a light, misting rain.”
“Nothing processed?”
“Oh, no. That sawdust was sawed by hand. Artisan craftsmen from a Mississippi commune using only the finest steel to ensure an even, consistent fluff.”
“Fluff?”
“That’s the technical term for the loft and volume of the sawdust.”
Shaw drew out another handful and blew it toward North.
Dancing backward, North yelped and covered the ribs. “Asshole!”
“Is Mark in there?”
“Obviously he’s not in there. He was here last night. And I’m starving.”
“I’m starving too. Give me some of those.”
“No fucking way. You got sawdust all over them.”
“I did not. And you owe me. I bought you that elote last time we were on Cherokee Street.”
“Shaw: No. Fucking. Way.”
Five minutes later, although North still wasn’t sure how it had happened, they were splitting the rack of ribs. They sat on one of the parking stops, dropping the bones in the bag of sawdust, and Shaw took the black-eyed peas while North devoured the mac and cheese. It wasn’t exactly a scenic view—the red wood veneer of Hog Hollow Hocks gave way to old brick at the back, where a security light shone down on dumpsters. The April air had cooled; overhead, clouds bumped together and rumbled, and once, to the west, North saw lightning. The wind had picked up, and the UPS shorts, which were fun to wear because they got Shaw so damn riled, left North’s legs freezing. That was when he noticed that Shaw was shivering harder than ever.
Reaching over, North tugged on Shaw’s electric blue rain jacket. It slid over Shaw’s collarbone and exposed Shaw’s thin chest. “You didn’t think about putting on a shirt under that jacket?”
Shaw shrugged, still shoveling black-eyed peas into his mouth. “You were in a hurry.”
“And you decided that a cold April day was ideal for wearing your capris from Janis Joplin’s summer collection?”
“I, uh, couldn’t find anything else.”
“Let’s go sit in the car.”
Shaw shrugged and dug around some more in the paper carton, but he shivered so hard on the next breath that he almost fell off the parking stop.
North slipped an arm around Shaw’s shoulders and scooted closer. The heat off Shaw’s skinny ass was negligible, and neither of them said anything. After another minute, Shaw finished the black-eyed peas, belched, and tossed the empty carton toward the trash.
“Pig.”
“Jock.”
“Fuckboy.”
“Whore.”
A convertible drove past Hog Hollow Hocks, the top down, a Kesha song bumping, and the girls in the back seat screamed and waved at Shaw and North. Shaw waved back, and they screamed even louder, and then the car disappeared into the night.
“I really thought we’d find him,” North said. “Normally, we’re pretty good at this job, but things have been fucked up on this case since the beginning.”
“We can still find him.”
“I know.”
The door to Hog Hollow Hocks opened, and the pair of ladies—the ones who had been using their breasts to hoist the beer bottles—stumbled out into the night. One tripped at the berm and tumbled into a boxwood shrub, her ass in the air, her legs waving until her friend pulled her out, and then they both shrieked with laughter and staggered to their car.
“You smell like ribs,” Shaw said, his bod
y rocking into North’s as he burrowed under North’s arm and shivered again.
Maybe a minute passed. Maybe it was five. North’s ass was frozen solid; his legs had gone numb. For all he cared, though, they could stay that way the rest of the night. There was something on North’s tongue like a mouthful of pop rocks, sparkling and crackling and snapping, and he didn’t know what it was. Questions, maybe, but he didn’t know what he wanted to ask. Maybe not questions. You could do other things with your mouth than talk, after all.
“I guess we should go look for him,” Shaw said.
“Back to square one. At least we can get you something warmer; it’s definitely going to rain.”
“No, I mean, we should look around here.”
“I already did, Shaw. He was here last night. It’s not like he left a trail of clues. He’s gone.”
“He might have left the restaurant last night, but his car’s right there.”
“What?”
Shaw pointed across the lot to a blue Ford Fusion. “That’s his.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s on the personal property record. At least, that’s the car registered at his address.”
“How long have you known that?”
“Since, oh, five minutes after you walked inside Hog Hollow Hocks. I checked my phone. You should be proud: that’s what you always do, and I just copied you.”
“And you didn’t think you needed to tell me?”
“I was hungry. And his car was right there. We were watching it. I mean, he’s got to come back sometime, doesn’t he?”
North didn’t say anything.
“A guy trying to keep a low profile,” Shaw said. “A guy trying to stay out of sight, he wouldn’t leave his car, would he? He wouldn’t leave it out in the open. He’d stash it out of sight.”
North rubbed Shaw’s shoulder.
“He’s probably dead, isn’t he?” Shaw said.
North wet his lips. “He’s on the run. Maybe he ditched that car and borrowed a friend’s.”
“Did he meet someone here last night?”
“If he did, the waitress didn’t remember it.”
