by Gregory Ashe
Positioning himself at the center of the booth, Shaw looked out into the black emptiness of the theater. Then he kept moving. A door on the far side of the booth was marked Stage Manger, and Shaw found, again, that it turned easily. Where would Mark Sevcik, the man who was always trying to hide in plain sight, hide the recordings?
In plain sight.
Shaw stepped into a room that had obviously served a number of purposes over the years. At some point, doubtless, it had been exactly what the door proclaimed: an office. Over the years, though, the desk and chairs and filing cabinets and any other furniture that had once served functional roles in this place had been removed, and instead, a twin bed hugged one wall, neatly made up, the pillow fluffed and leaning against the wall. A door opened onto a private washroom, where a toothbrush sat in a cup and a feather boa curled above the mirror. A pair of fake breasts occupied the seat of a folding chair just inside the bathroom.
Returning to the control booth proper, Shaw studied the space. It seemed insane for Mark Sevcik to come here, to hide the recording in a place where he risked encountering Regina. But something told Shaw that he was right. Under the surface of conscious thought, where his best insights swam darkly, Shaw could intuit a connection between Mark’s Facebook page, where he talked about his new passion as a sound engineer, and Regina telling them that she needed amateurs to run lights and sound. Some sort of shadow-logic had brought Mark Sevcik here, to the Lucky, to hide the recording. The reasoning behind that decision, Shaw could figure out when he had time.
He ran his hands behind the control boards. He untaped the cables. He removed the tacks from an ancient Cats poster—the only surviving decoration—in hopes of finding a hollowed-out space in the wall. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Shaw stepped back, trying to take in his surroundings, to see everything fresh and reconsider where Mark might have hidden the recordings. As he did, light flashed out along the stage, brightening everything to an eye-watering intensity. Blinking, Shaw pressed against the glass, staring out to see what was happening.
At first, he thought someone had fallen. Or fainted. A pair of legs were visible in the overpowering brilliance of the stage lights. A pair of boots. And then realizations began to tick down. Red Wing boots. North’s boots. North was here. North had come here. North was . . . North was lying down. That was ridiculous because North would never do something like that, never come here and . . . lie down. That was as far as Shaw’s brain could go. There were other words just beyond the pale, but he couldn’t think them. All he could think was lie down.
A tall, balding black man shuffled into view. He bent, hooked his arms under North’s knees, and dragged him across the stage. North’s arms flopped. North’s head dragged and bounced. Blood matted the messy thatch of blond hair.
“No.” Shaw whispered. Then he pounded on the glass and screamed, “No!”
The man shot upright, staring at the control booth, and Shaw froze. Blood boiled in Shaw’s ears. His thoughts crackled in like bad aerial reception—the realization that he was staring at Tony Montgomery, the man who transformed into Regina Rex, the realization that the next few minutes would decide whether or not Shaw lived, and more importantly, whether or not North did too—and then fuzzed out again. The raised edge of the sound board cut into Shaw’s hand, the sharp corner of the metal biting deep enough to draw blood, and he felt it bead and slide along the metal and drop into the hollow space beneath the board.
“Shaw?” It was Regina’s voice, but without the affectation. Tony shaded his eyes. “Jesus Christ. Shaw, is that you?”
Shaw’s thoughts crackled into another snapshot: the blood from his hand dripping into the hollow space beneath the board.
The hollow space.
He worked his thumb under the board, popping a tiny screw free, and then another, and another, until he could worm his hand beneath the board. Wires. Dust. Something hard that crumbled—an ancient cracker, Shaw imagined. And then the smooth, clean lines of plastic. Shaw gripped the object, worked his hand free, and stared down at the flash drive in his hand. Blood ran down his fingers, sliding along the drive’s plastic case.
“Shaw, baby, I’m going to count to three.” Tony’s voice carried easily through the abandoned theater. Of course it did; this was Tony’s domain, and he knew the acoustics, knew how to project his voice. This was where the illusion of Regina Rex was best and brightest. “You’ve got something that belongs to me. And I’ve got something that I know you want.” A hint of Regina’s cooing crept back into Tony’s voice. “I’ve got a video, Shaw. Of the Slasher. All I want is what’s mine.”
Shaw stretched across the window, fumbled open the booth’s small window, and shouted, “What’s yours?”
“My videos, Shaw. I’ve spent a lot of time collecting those. A lot of effort. I know you and North know where they are. I was planning on spending some quality time with your friend.” Tony bumped North’s big boot with his foot. “He looks tough, but I think I can get him to talk. But you’re here, and that changes things. We can make a deal: my videos for what you want. Proof, Shaw. Proof they don’t have the real Slasher down at Potosi.”
“You’re lying.”
Regina’s laugh floated through the theater. “Baby, I don’t have to lie.”
“You were at Teddi’s. You heard all about this at Teddi’s.”
“Sweetheart, I hear everything at Teddi’s. I heard about you and North looking for Mark. I heard about all the rich little boys who didn’t know how to come out, all the rich old men who couldn’t. Teddi practically showed me where they were with glow-in-the-dark paint. I heard about you and the Slasher.” A hint of dark amusement came on the next words. “I really thought I had a chance with you, Shaw. I can tell a virgin from a mile off, but a virgin like you, all cut up and damaged and sick with puppy love for your big, butch best friend,” Tony punctuated each word by kicking North in the side. “Well, I really thought I had you. I put it on a little too hard at Teddi’s that day, but sometimes fortune favors the bold.”
“Don’t touch him. Don’t you ever fucking touch him again.”
Regina’s laughter drifted through the theater again, but it was Tony’s voice when he spoke. “Normally I’d be all sweetness and light with you, but I’m under a lot of pressure. I’ve got to get going before the cops decide to check the Lucky again. And I have to be honest: I really have been in a foul mood ever since that little bitch stole my work and deleted the copies, like he wanted me to know. So, here’s the new deal: if you don’t get out here, I’m going to do something bad to North. You wouldn’t like that, would you?”
For another moment, Shaw’s thoughts fuzzed into gray, mindless terror.
It had been like this the night the West End Slasher had cornered Shaw in an alley, with Carl pressing Shaw back against the bricks, one arm across Shaw’s chest to protect him. Shaw didn’t really remember anything else: not his attacker, not the feel of the knife as it cut deep into his leg and across his balls, not even the noise Carl made when he died. His mind had gone to this same buzzing black-out, and then the next thing Shaw remembered, he was staring down at Carl, and Carl was dead, and there was the coppery bright pain running through Shaw.
Not again. Not again.
It wasn’t the words that dragged Shaw out of that blank thunderhead. It was another memory. A different memory. Shaw on his back, his head aching, staring up at North McKinney, a rainbow shimmer of fluorescents flickering around North as he bent to check that Shaw was ok.
Shaw’s thoughts crackled again, coalescing in those bursts of bad reception. Not again. Not North.
He swept his hand across the light board. The theater pitched into blackness again. He kept smashing the boards. Queen came on, playing at a volume that rattled Shaw, threatening to shake him to pieces even inside the booth. Then Shaw staggered toward the door. The stairs. The lobby. The theater proper.
The music was louder here. The force was concussive
; Shaw stumbled as it beat against him, knocking him against the rows of seats, and he had to brace himself on the backs of the chairs as he ran.
He hadn’t killed the lights completely, although it had seemed like it at first. A faint, greenish-blue glow filtered in from overhead, and as Shaw’s eyes adjusted, he could make out the stage, make out Tony staggering like a man who’d been hit upside the head, his hands over his ears, his mouth open in an outraged shriek that was swallowed up by the music of Queen.
Three feet from the stage, Shaw jumped and rolled onto the stage. He came up easily on his feet—yoga, thank God for yoga—and grabbed the can of pepper spray from the waistband of his cycling shorts. Tony spotted him and picked up a wooden baseball bat lying next to North. He rushed at Shaw, still screaming under the pounding music.
Shaw breathed in. He breathed out. For the first time in seven years, he was centered, and the past faded away. Everything in Shaw was finally, perfectly centered. Only it wasn’t centered on himself. It was centered on North McKinney.
Pointing the pepper spray at Tony, Shaw pulled the trigger.
Bright pink plastic foam sprayed from the can, hitting Tony in the face. He sputtered, and his surprise was obvious, but he just kept coming.
Shaw had just enough time for a moment of horror: he had grabbed the wrong can.
Tony brought the bat around in a long arc. Shaw threw himself sideways; the bat clipped his arm, but instead of breaking bone it just ran through him like a long, electric shock, leaving Shaw’s arm numb and limp as he hit the ground and rolled. Tony came after him, bringing the bat up in both hands and coming down with it like a mallet. Shaw scrambled back, and the bat cracked against the stage, throwing up a hail of splinters.
Over the pounding music, Tony was screaming something. Shaw continued to scurry backward, barely fast enough to avoid the bat a third time, and then he felt himself hit something heavy, felt vibrations running through metal, and he couldn’t go any farther. Tony advanced, raising the bat overhead again, a grin pulling his features into an expression that made it easy to see Regina Rex in his face.
Shaw held up the flash drive. Shock rippled through Tony’s face. The bat in his hands sagged. Shaw made a pitching motion, like he was tossing the drive to one side, and Tony’s head followed it. It was instinct. It was a classic misdirect. Shaw drove his heel into the side of Tony’s knee, and he felt the pop of bone and muscle in Tony’s leg, saw pain implode Tony’s face.
But somehow Tony didn’t fall. He was screaming—pain this time, but rage too—but he didn’t fall. He staggered. And then he brought the bat up, and Shaw tried to move back, but he clanged up against the same metal barrier that had stopped him last time. The bat blurred as it swept down toward Shaw.
And then Tony jerked, as though someone had pushed him, and the bat’s trajectory slipped, and it smashed against the stage. Tony made another of those little jerking movements. He stared at Shaw, his eyes wide with surprise. And then he looked like he was trying to sit, only his crippled knee wouldn’t support him, and he toppled to one side. He didn’t move after that.
Behind him, picked out in the nightmare blur of the blue-green lights, North was on his knees, both hands wrapped around his pistol.
Chapter 32
He thought North was unconscious,” Shaw said at what he assumed was a very reasonable volume.
Judging by the way Detective Reck winced and worked a finger in his ear, Shaw figured his own hearing was still slightly messed up. Reck said something like, “And then he shot him?”
Shaw settled for nodding.
They were at Barnes again, and Shaw was in a hospital room meant to be shared, although currently he was the only occupant. Barr had put him through a series of questions, and Shaw had answered them, and then Barr had left and Reck had come in and asked basically the same questions. Shaw guessed that Barr was currently running North through the same series of events.
“What about the blackmail materials? The recordings?”
Shaw shook his head. “No sign of them.” He had hidden the flash drive inside an ancient gas oven—the metal barrier that he had crashed into on stage at the Lucky—before the police arrived. Shaw wasn’t sure why. He knew something was wrong, but he wasn’t sure what. Something was swimming in those dark waters deep in his brain, and Shaw wasn’t about to hand over the blackmail material until he knew why he felt that way. “I thought I’d find them in the dressing room—Regina had told us about a blackmail video involving a dressing room—but there was no sign of the drive.”
“What drive?” Reck asked, his eyes suddenly bright.
“External hard drive. Flash drive.” Shaw shrugged. “Whatever he stored the videos on.”
“You really think Mark Sevcik would store his blackmail materials within ten feet of a person he was blackmailing?”
Shaw smiled. “Pretty stupid, right? Regina was convinced we had them, though. She was going to kill us to make sure nobody else got them.”
Reck shrugged; he was wearing another of those damn-near-transparent white shirts, and it rode tight against the ripple of muscle in his chest and abdomen. He stood, stretched, and considered Shaw again. “You’re very pretty. Not classically pretty, God, I don’t mean that. But very, very pretty in your own way.”
“Thank you?”
“But you’re a shit liar.”
“What am I lying about?”
“I don’t know. But I’d guess it has something to do with your boyfriend.” He jerked his head down the hall toward the room where they had taken North.
“North’s not my boyfriend. He has a husband.”
Reck had a tight smirk on his face. “I know.”
Eventually, the detectives released both men, and Shaw found himself standing in the hallway, studying the bandage on the side of North’s head. Aside from the injury, aside from the blood on the Carhartt jacket, aside from North’s pallor and the way it made those ice-rim eyes huge and glowing, aside from the memory that played and replayed in Shaw’s mind—the way North’s head had rolled, the bloody swatch of hair, the certainty that North was dead—aside from all of that, everything was exactly the same.
“That bad?” North said.
“It’s kind of a World War I shell-shocked look. You need a Florence Nightingale.”
North pulled a face. “Christ, Tuck is going to be furious.” He looked like he might say more, but then he pulled his phone from his pocket. “That’s him. He’s down in the pick-up zone. Come on, we’ll give you a ride.”
They walked to the elevator in silence. They rode the elevator in silence. Shaw kept catching himself moving: his hand drifting toward North’s, his head tilting to rest on his shoulder, his body angled to the hard lines of the other man. He stopped himself again and again. His mind kept up that stuttering loop: the way North’s head lolled, the blood, the terrible stillness. Then the elevator dinged, and they walked in silence to the pick-up zone. Tuck’s Beamer was just passing them, and the steady flow of traffic meant that Tuck had to continue forward, looping around for another pass before he could pick up North.
Shaw managed to say, “You were right. I should have organized my desk. I should have put the silly string somewhere else.”
North didn’t answer.
That wasn’t the right thing. That wasn’t the thing Shaw wanted to say. The thing he needed to say. It was now, Shaw thought. Now. Now or never.
But before he could say anything more, North said, “You’re my best friend in the whole world.” His head was down, his hands stuffed in the Carhartt jacket, and he was kicking the toe of one Red Wing against the curb. “And I know I fucked up royally. I don’t expect you to forgive me. I just—I wanted you to know how sorry I am. And that I want you to be happy. And I’m so fucking proud of you because you are the most fucking amazing person I’ve ever met.”
Shaw tried to say something. All the stupid, smart-ass things they normally said to each other. Or
something better. Something truer. He even tried to say the full truth, what he hadn’t been able to say in eight years. And none of it would come out.
Then the Beamer swept around, its halogen lights splitting Shaw’s head like a migraine, and he knew the moment had passed.
“Come on,” North said. “We’ll take you home.”
“No,” Shaw said. “No thanks.” He rose up on tiptoe and dragged North into a hug, and before he knew what he was doing, he kissed him on the cheek. As Shaw dropped back onto his heels, he said, “Back to work tomorrow.”
North’s hand drifted up like he wanted to touch that spot on his cheek. Then it froze, and he lowered it. And then it drifted back up again. Then it froze.
“Partners?” Shaw said.
North nodded. His lips quirked like he had something to say. Or like something else, maybe.
The Beamer’s horn blared.
North’s hand dropped to his side. Slowly. And then he took a few steps toward the Beamer, and for a moment, Shaw thought he might turn back, say something, do something, but then his stride firmed and he jogged the last few steps. As North pulled open the door, Tucker’s voice drifted out. “Not trying to be an asshole, babe, but there are people waiting. Jesus, what did you do to your—” And then the door swung shut.
Chapter 33
Pari had left a note on the garage door, and Shaw peeled it off and read it as he stepped inside. Do I have two bosses again, the note began, like the Viet Cong answering to their Chinese and Russian overlords? Or am I still dealing with the Sino-Soviet split?
