Back in Black

by Rhys Ford

  Sitting together, it was obvious Mike and Ichi were related, despite their different styles. Mike was exactly what you would want to see as the CEO of a private security firm specializing in providing protection for celebrities and millionaires, while Ichi, our younger half brother, looked every inch of the bad-boy rebel tattoo artist who took down my best friend’s bachelorhood within a year of meeting him. I was definitely the whiter sheep of the family, inheriting more of the Irish from my father, but I definitely lean toward Ichi’s way of thinking.

  That said, I was surprised he advocated me carrying a gun. He’d been born and raised in Japan, fully entrenched with an antipathy toward firearms, and had been very vocal about me not carrying a gun when I got into a bad place a few years ago. To hear him say I should be armed made me stop and think.

  I was thankful for Jae’s warmth and weight against my legs when he sat down on the recliner next to me. Moving to give him more room, I rubbed at his lower back while handing him my beer, knowing he’d want a sip. He took the bottle and began to smooth down the paper, undoing all of my hard work. My wedding ring was bright against his black T-shirt, its weight as comforting as the man who’d put it on my finger.

  “I promised Jae I wouldn’t carry a gun,” I reminded all of them. “I also promised to love, honor, and obey him, so I think that’s all covered like an umbrella insurance policy. It’s not up for discussion.”

  “You’re not in the same place that you were in, agi,” Jae murmured, surprising me. “Do you want to talk about this now? Or later?”

  “It doesn’t matter what any of them say, you’re the only one that matters in this.” I stilled my fingers but kept my hand pressed against Jae’s body. His heartbeat throbbed my palm with the steady rhythm I knew as well as I did my own breathing. “I don’t want you to ever be scared of me.”

  “I don’t ever want to be scared for you,” he countered, twisting about until he nearly faced me, his leg draped over my knees. Glancing toward the grill, Jae prodded Bobby, “You’ve had two times when someone shot at you. Listening to you describe both times, it sounds like two different men shot at you. Yes?”

  Jae wasn’t wrong. I didn’t get a good look at the guy at the Brinkerhoff house, but he was younger, not just because of what he was wearing but because of how he moved and how erratic his gunshots were. Although the guy in the alleyway didn’t hit us, his aim was better, his groupings tight and precise. We’d been protected by tons of steel and plastic, and if Bobby and I hadn’t been as paranoid as we were, he could have taken us out easily.

  “The shooter at the Brinkerhoffs’ could have killed both of us if he’d held off. I don’t think he was looking to kill us,” Bobby responded carefully. “But I got the feeling from how he took his shots that he wasn’t used to handling a gun. More of a kid or somebody who was afraid of them. The guy today was a professional. And even though Cole here went all psycho on him, he wasn’t going to talk. Or at least not there.”

  “O’Byrne is going to keep him locked up tight. One thing we’ve got going for us is he won’t be remanded over to release, not with a couple of attempted murder charges on him.” As happy as I was about California restructuring the bail system, I didn’t have high hopes a lawyer couldn’t weasel the guy out of custody. “At the very least, they’ll be able to hold him for a few days, maybe a week, and if we can break this open before he gets out, chances are he’ll just go away.”

  “Even if he does get out, he might just disappear,” Mike added, “unless you’ve made the job personal, in which case, I not only suggest you carry a gun but you should probably carry two.”

  I wasn’t going to say anything either way. Did I wish I had a gun on me while I was kissing the pavement in the alleyway? Hell yes. Was I probably going to end up in another situation where I was facing down a muzzle without anything to protect myself? It sure as hell looked likely. But I had a job to do, and I was going to do it to the best of my abilities. I wasn’t going to try to persuade or cajole Jae, and unless he asked—

  “What do you think, Cole?” Jae asked, bringing my thoughts to a screeching halt. “Because what I wish and want isn’t reality. You have dangerous cases, and this one seems to be getting more treacherous with every day that goes by. I don’t want to lose you, not after I fought so hard to keep you. Do you think you should carry a gun?”

  Marriages are tricky things. Some guys complain their wives say one thing but mean another. The truth is everybody is like that. No gender has a monopoly on hiding how they feel and saying what they think the other person wants. It’s not a good basis for a relationship, but a lot of people do that. I have the luxury of being loved by a handful of strong-willed people. Whenever I’ve stumbled, I reach out to Claudia, Scarlet, and Maddy for marriage advice. Not because they’ll side with me—because that’s certainly not the case—it was more that they’ll always give me frank, no-holds-barred advice.

  It’s been years since Jae and I exchanged rings, and I’ve gone to them quite a few times because I’ve stumbled over obstacles both of us have placed in my path. I’ve come away from those years with a single, hard-learned truth—my marriage will only last forever if I’m honest with the man I love.

  “Yes. I think I’m going to have to,” I finally said, rubbing my thumb across his ribs. “You’re right. It’s not like before. But I also don’t want any of this to bleed into my life. The last time, things got too crazy and I almost lost a lot of you. I can’t risk that. Yes, I want to help O’Byrne bring down Adele’s murderer, but if the price of that is too high, if it’s going to cost me one of you, then I’m going to walk away.”

  “I have never been afraid of you,” Jae reassured me with a soft kiss. “Just be careful, and remember, if someone tries to kill you, you kill them first. No one gets to take you away from me. No one.”

  I WAS still fat and happy and filled with food when Mike ambushed me in the kitchen. I was expecting it. My older brother didn’t like me making decisions on my own, despite me having gone through over three decades of walking, talking, and eating without his immediate assistance. His controlling busybody nature was one of the main reasons his daughter received very loud musical instruments and possibly a muscle car when she turns sixteen. I loved Mike deeply, but he was like an octopus—once he got ahold of somebody, he never let them go.

  Even if he was strangling them to death.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” That was his opening gambit, one I recognized from many verbal chess games we’d played in the past. I nodded, and he barreled forward, intent on leading me by the nose to wherever he wanted me to be. “You know I still want you to come work for me. You could head up—”

  “Mike, stop.” It was hard enough to load the dishwasher exactly how Jae liked it to be arranged without fending off my brother while trying to concentrate on my own personal game of reverse Jenga. “Just stop.”

  I didn’t know what to do with the glass baking dish, because the damned thing just didn’t fit and I couldn’t remember the precise arrangement it needed to go onto the rack in order to be cleaned properly. Consigning it to a hand washing, I put it in the sink, then leaned against the counter to face my brother.

  “I appreciate you a lot. And I’m glad we’re at a point where we can talk and scream at ball games together, but I’m not a little kid. I haven’t been a little kid for a long time,” I said gently, shaking my head to stop him from interrupting me, because I could see that happening. “I have you and Maddy to thank for dragging me out of that darkness Ben put me in. Out of all of that shittiness, us getting back on a path to being brothers was the best thing that happened to me.

  “I’m going to be the first one to admit I was pretty fucked up and you were there when I was just pretty much a zombie. And I need you to understand that I’m not spitting in your face, because I love you. I love the hell out of you and Maddy and the screaming terror you call a daughter, but you need to see me as I am now.” Clasping his shoulder, I squeezed lightly,
pulling him in a little bit, just so we were closer. “I’m a lot healthier than I was five years ago. Hell, even three years ago. And I have all of you to thank for that, but I also worked hard to get in a better place, to fix some of the things that were broken inside of me, and I can’t be a grown-up if I use you as a safety net. There may come a time when I want to change professions, and if you’ve got a place for me then, maybe I’ll see if it fits, but it goes both ways now. If you need something, you know you can depend upon me. I’ve proven that. And I will die to protect what’s yours, because it’s mine as well… family, I mean. Those ugly clothes you wear while playing golf are going to be the first thing on the bonfire if your life ever crashes and burns.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my golf clothes.” Mike sniffed indignantly, and we both ignored the tears dampening the edges of his eyes. “You really should take up the sport. It’ll help you relax.”

  “Do you really want me to start playing a sport where they give me a weapon I could use to bludgeon people? Isn’t it bad enough that Bobby’s got me in a boxing ring?” I teased, drawing my brother in for a tight hug. “I’ll be okay. I’ve got a permit to conceal carry, and if things look a little crazy, I’m going to tap out. I’ve learned that lesson. Deal?”

  “I don’t think you have,” Mike argued, mumbling into my shoulder because he was that much shorter than me. “But I trust you to hear us if we tell you it’s going too far. And O’Byrne will kick your ass if you get shot.”

  I laughed despite the emotion choking both of us. “That’s only because she doesn’t want to do the paperwork. Now, why don’t we head back into the living room, and you and Bobby can argue about what kind of gun I should carry so I can ignore you and just take the Glocks that I like.”

  Eleven

  WIPING MY bottom lip clean of whipped cream, I sighed, “I don’t know which god is responsible for Mexican hot chocolate, but I would risk human sacrifice and the plague of frogs to tell them thank you.”

  I wasn’t overexaggerating. When I first came out to California, kicked out of my family home, the front door bolted shut behind me, I didn’t have a lot of experiences with food other than sausages and the occasional casserole. Although I came from Chicago—a city with fantastic food—the McGinnis clan was pretty much a mayo-on-white-bread kind of family. The only mustard I’d run into growing up was yellow and usually found in a giant squeezy bottle next to a container of watery ketchup. Our meals were rotated throughout the week with a burnt roast served on Sunday, slightly sweet spaghetti on Monday, and by the time Friday rolled around, I was very thankful for my plate of fish sticks piled high on a mound of macaroni and cheese.

  My brother and I were raised to be suspicious of anything that wasn’t processed within an inch of its life and, in a pinch, could be used as a salt lick for roaming deer in the winter. We played enough sports to keep us reasonably fit, but when puberty hit me, I shot up and Mike shot out. Anyone seeing us knew we were brothers because we looked alike, but there was also a lot of speculation about the McGinnis boys actually being a pair of lab mice plotting to take over the world, mostly because I was short a brain cell or two and Mike had a big head with enormous ears.

  Mike fled to California first, and I followed in my brother’s footsteps, unsure of what I wanted to accomplish but knowing I couldn’t survive another winter in Chicago with very little money and no family to depend on. As much as I loved the Cubs, I had to seek out warmer climates, just in case I was going to have to sleep outdoors.

  When I hit Los Angeles, my older brother was still suspicious of nonprocessed foods, but a chance encounter at a taco truck having a three-for-one-dollar midnight blowout to empty their steam table opened up our minds to the delectable, savory world of California Mexican food. It was also serendipity—or perhaps God was smiling down on me—because the older woman manning the grills that night threw in a couple of large Mexican hot chocolates and a bag of cinnamon-sugar buñuelos.

  We gorged that night, getting fat and happy on carnitas, carne asada, and adobada tacos piled high with lettuce, crumbling white cheese, and pico de gallo. But as delightful as the tacos were, the hot chocolate hit something in my soul I never realized needed filling.

  And it has been a favorite of mine ever since. Especially when things have gone balls-up and I needed to get my head on straight.

  From the skeptical look on O’Byrne’s face, I didn’t believe she felt the love the rich, dark cinnamon-infused hot chocolate could bring to a dreary day, but as the saying went, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them put on a bikini and do the breaststroke.

  “He gets like this,” Bobby informed her, his hands nearly swallowing the paper cup filled with bitter coffee he’d gotten from the cafeteria truck parked outside of Central. I’d had their coffee before, and my stomach still had a hole in it from the last cup I’d drunk, close to seven years ago. Bobby claimed to like it—further proof Bobby was missing a few marbles. “So this guy isn’t saying anything?”

  “Not a damn thing, and so far, no asshole in a suit has come forward to try to get him out. We’re running fingerprints and facial identification but haven’t come up with anything yet. There’s a pool going that he’s a pro, with some pretty good odds on one of McGinnis’s ex-boyfriends hiring him to take Mac out,” O’Byrne said, making a face when I looked up from my hot chocolate, the sweet richness now tasting of ash on my tongue. “Sorry. That was shitty to say and… fuck.”

  “Look, I know I’m not exactly a favorite with a lot of the old-timers, but most of them are assholes anyway,” I shot back with a shrug, tasting my chocolate again and finding it just as sweet. “So if he’s not talking, then we’ve got to go to plan B—trying to get something out of Arthur.”

  “I called San Francisco to see if I could get someone to give me a read on Marlena Brinkerhoff, but no one’s saying a word.” O’Byrne picked through her nachos, most of her attention on the people passing by the arrangement of bolted-down steel benches and rickety tables some bureaucrat thought would make a good place to eat in the shadow of LAPD’s imposing glass headquarters. In a couple of months, the concrete courtyard would be broiled in an unrelenting Southern California sun, and anyone with half a brain would eat at their desks like normal people did. O’Byrne plucked one of the green-tomatillo-sauce pods I’d gotten from the truck off of the table, cracked it open, and shook it all over her nachos. “They apparently are reluctant to give out information on anyone who works up there. I can’t get anyone to confirm nor deny she’s with the DA office, but with the crazies these days, I can’t blame them. The captain’s going to go through official channels, but he thinks I’m barking up a very short tree and there’s a grizzly bear sitting on top of it, waiting to bite my head off. I hate politics.”

  “And let me guess—you don’t have any idea who’s feeding her information,” Bobby interjected. “Did Book back you in using McGinnis here on the investigation?”

  “He hates politics as much as I do, but he plays the game better. His brother’s a captain up with SFPD, so I’m going to guess his official channels are probably a lot more sneaky.” She flicked off a piece of onion, moving it to her napkin. It looked like every other piece of onion, so I didn’t know what it did to offend her, but obviously it had to go. “We all know what happens to people who sniff around other departments and offices. That kind of thing comes back and bites you in the ass, even if it’s just crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s on a case. People don’t like getting looked at, especially people with secrets. If Marlena Brinkerhoff has something to hide, I want to find out what it is and how it relates to her grandmother’s death.”

  “Right now we’re just throwing wet spaghetti against the wall,” I said, inspecting the onions on my food in case they were infected with whatever fouled O’Byrne’s nachos. All of the white bits were white, and all of the green bits next to them were green. Most of the red bits were red, but with tomatoes, they usually ran the range of deep cri
mson to light pink, so I was going to have to push the I Believe button that my tomatoes were fine. “Can you send me a picture of the asshole from the alley? Bobby and I are going to try to shake Marlena off of her grandfather, and I’ll see if I can get him to give me some answers about his wife. I’d like to see if he can identify the guy who shot at us, or at least recognize him. If our John Doe isn’t going to cough up any answers, maybe we can get them another way.”

  “Hopefully we’ll get a hit off of his prints, but having Brinkerhoff look at his mug shot isn’t a bad idea. Just don’t wear the old guy out,” O’Byrne warned. “I don’t want Marlena Brinkerhoff to have a leg to stand on if she comes after the LAPD because she thinks her grandfather’s too weak to answer questions. She isn’t letting us in there, but you’re a different story. You work for the guy. You have an in I don’t. Just be careful.”

  “Telling Princess here to be careful is kind of like telling a giraffe to watch its head in the trees,” Bobby said with a chuckle. “Asshole knows the trees are there, but he’s going to hit his head anyway. Come on, kid, drink the rest of your hot cocoa so we can go to the hospital and shake down an old guy.”

  A SLIGHT drizzle smeared headlights through the intermittent swish of the Rover’s wipers. The overcast of the morning finally gave in to its promise to fuck up Los Angeles’s traffic by dumping what was probably just a half a cup of water over twenty square miles and turning everybody’s day to shit. We’d gotten into the SUV without getting wet, but the sprinkles chased us up Wilshire and down to the hospital, bringing us to a standstill at nearly every light. I didn’t know what it was about Southern California drivers, but as soon as there was a hint of water in the air, the gears in their heads overloaded and they began to do stupid things, like the asshole who decided to play chicken with a fire truck and not only lost in a spectacular fashion, lodging his Lexus underneath its front end somehow, but also consigning us to a level of Dante’s hell where we all drove around in circles wishing we were dead.