by Andrea Speed
As soon as he got in Deuce’s rather anonymous silver Saturn—a car choice made deliberately because the more anonymous your car, the less likely you were to be pulled over—Deuce’s jaw unhinged, and he gaped at him until Holden started feeling insecure. “I know,” Holden said, not bothering to hide his frown.
It still took a minute for Deuce to snap out of it. “Holy shit. Did you really fight six guys?”
“Yep. Although I only count it as four since I killed two of them.”
Deuce continued to look amazed, his eyebrows migrating to his forehead. “Dude. That’s fucking hard-core. When’d you turn into Daredevil, man?”
“I think I’m more of a Punisher, really. And I’ve always been badass.”
“Yeah, but… this is a whole ’nother level.” Deuce had a pair of genuine game dice, with a hole drilled through them, suspended on a chain from his rearview mirror. They swung and clacked as he drove. When he rounded corners too abruptly, they almost hit Holden’s face.
Holden shrugged, belatedly aware Deuce’s statement was kind of a question. “The world’s getting uglier. I’m rising to meet it.”
Deuce chuckled and shook his head. “Here I am, settling down and getting a paunch, and you’re fighting guys in the street.”
“Somebody’s gotta do it.”
Deuce continued shaking his head, but he was smiling. “You were always pretty wild, but I wouldn’t have guessed you’d end up like this.”
“This?”
“On a vigilante trip. Not that I’m judging you, man. I think it’s awesome. I wish I was brave enough to do it.”
“You need more stupidity than bravery,” Holden admitted, watching the lights of the city as they streaked by. Holden wasn’t sure how much of it was Deuce’s driving and how much of it was the drug cocktail he was currently on. He didn’t feel high, he just felt invincible, which was exactly what he needed.
“Yeah, you say that, but I don’t believe it.” While they waited at a stoplight, Deuce glanced over at him and asked, “So what’re we doing tonight? Is it vigilante stuff?”
“No. You’re driving me to the train station. But if the cops ask, what are you doing?”
“Dropping off my cousin Bobby. He lives down on a rez in New Mexico. He fucking hates cops, especially white cops. They can ask him questions all day, and he’ll think of a thousand different ways to say fuck you.”
“And he doesn’t mind lying for you?”
“Absolutely not, as long as he gets to annoy a cop. He’s all in.”
Holden had never met Bobby, but he sounded like a guy after his own heart.
Deuce reached across the seat and gave him a light backhand slap on the shoulder. “C’mon. You could’ve got an Uber if you needed a lift. What’s up?”
“You know I work as a detective now, yeah? It’s related to that.”
“But I don’t get the cop avoidance.”
“This guy ain’t gonna be happy to see me. He ain’t gonna be happy with what I plan to do to him either.”
This elicited another chuckle from Deuce. “Damn, son, you don’t ever play, do you?”
“Not unless I’m paid for it.”
Deuce kept chuckling and shaking his head until they finally reached the block of the train station. There were few parking spots, even at this hour, but Deuce managed to find a place to pull over. “Call me when you need a lift back, Punisher,” he said as Holden got out of the car.
“Thanks.” Holden pulled up his hood, attempting to use additional darkness to hide his face and its multiple contusions.
Gerald’s Instagram account had turned out to be an absolute gold mine of information on him. For instance, Gerald didn’t just like taking pictures of his food. He liked taking pictures from the train, and of the trains. He liked using trains. And it was hard to blame him, really. Holden did see the appeal. They were a lot roomier than buses and generally better to sleep on, but their expense could be prohibitive for a poor or homeless person. Not that Gerald had to worry about that. Gerald either didn’t know you could get rid of all that information, such as time stamps or locations, or he just didn’t care. Holden kind of thought the latter; Gerald was a straight white male and was probably oblivious to most of the world’s dangers.
That’s ultimately what privilege bought you—safety. You never worried about a freaky ex-client or some rando who decided you were too gay to be tolerated. Privilege was never leaving your tiny little bubble to see how being different—or simply female, or no specific gender—could put you in danger. Holden used to dwell in such a bubble, before he understood he was gay, when he lived in his middle-class home, safe in the knowledge that the world was meant for him, until it wasn’t, and his bubble burst. Just like there was no saint like a reformed sinner, there was no one who resented privilege as much as someone who used to have it.
A figure melted from the shadows of the train station, and Holden figured it was a panhandler or a hustler until they moved into a wedge of light cast from the windows. It was Hel, in an oversized Army surplus jacket and black watch cap that made her look both gender neutral and like she was being slowly swallowed by her clothes. That was her general sense of style. “So you got word it was safe to come out.”
“Street radio doesn’t fail.” She glanced around before asking quietly, “They gone?”
Holden nodded, and Hel didn’t press for details. She knew better than that. “All good, until I piss off the next person. Which should occur within the next few minutes.”
She smirked at that. “Need some backup?”
Holden was going to turn her down, even though it occurred to him he probably shouldn’t. Hel was a real old-school street fighter in that she had no training, but she was super effective and could really deal out punishment. She wasn’t afraid of pain, and why would she be? She’d been hit, stabbed, kicked, and worse. You had to get over your fear of pain if you wanted to be a decent fighter, and Holden wasn’t sure she’d ever had it.
She didn’t talk about her past at all, beyond confirming she couldn’t live at home anymore. But Holden had built a narrative out of the bits and pieces he knew about her. Holden was fairly sure she came from a background much like his: solidly middle-class, respectable, longtime conformists. The problem was most likely never growing out of her tomboy “phase”—her parents probably wanted a more proper and girly kind of girl. Either she was given an ultimatum—change or leave—or she just decided to leave. He wasn’t sure. The end result was the same regardless, and she was more genderfluid than ever. Also, he was pretty sure her perfect suburban parents were super abusive. She wasn’t afraid of pain because she’d been served portions of it her entire life. In some people, you could just tell. That had been fairly obvious in Roan too. But it tempered them like blades, made them battle hardened before the fights even began.
“I could probably use a lookout,” Holden admitted.
Hel nodded. “Could do that in my sleep.”
She could mean that literally. When you were homeless, you had to learn to sleep with some awareness. It took Holden well over six months of living in an apartment to get over sleeping lightly, waking at the tiniest noise. He wasn’t sure he’d ever made up the sleep debt.
After giving her a brief overview of what he was doing, they headed inside the bright, warm train station. It was a bit busier than expected at this time of night, but there was a very early morning train headed up to Vancouver. A train that Gerald was bound to be on. Some people’s social media accounts meant stalkers didn’t even have to try anymore. They could get all they needed to find their prey with a few decent posts.
Although the train station was pretty good about clearing out the homeless, Holden spotted a couple of them trying to sleep in the most out-of-sight chairs. One old-timer made eye contact with him, and Holden watched the shock of recognition settle in. Holden didn’t know the guy, but clearly he knew him as he got up and started shuffling toward the exit. He knew that where Holden was, trouble
usually followed, and he wanted no part of it. Holden made a mental note to give him a few bucks the next time he saw him.
Holden spotted Gerald almost immediately, sitting close to the ticket windows, head bowed over a cup of coffee he’d clearly bought up the street since a logo on the cup was visible. Holden sat in the row of seats behind him and to the right so Gerald was always in his view, even though he wasn’t looking at him. Hel sat at the end of the row so they didn’t look like they were together.
Holden lowered his hood and took out his phone to make it look like he belonged there and wasn’t another homeless guy looking for a warm, safe place to rest. He needed to buy a bunch of burner phones and hand them out to the homeless community because no matter how you looked, as long as you were dicking around on a phone, you were presumed to be in an acceptable social class.
There was noise from announcements and from the TVs showing what looked like CNN to the indifferent and bored, but it was impossible to make out many of the words. It was a low-level thrum of chaos, enough to try and fail to keep anyone from falling asleep. If those at the station really knew what sleeping on the street was like, they wouldn’t bother. Noise paled beside discomfort and fear.
All Holden had to do was wait for nature to take its course. While he did, he couldn’t help but notice that Gerald seemed weighed down for his trip. He was wearing a man bag of some stripe and had a wheeled suitcase as well. Roan hadn’t scared him so much he was thinking of getting away for a while, was he? Poor baby. The mean old redheaded death machine scared him shitless by asking him a question. What would he have done if he knew Roan could have drawn and quartered him by hand, with no help, and plucked his eyes out like cherry tomatoes? He’d probably have died before Roan could lay a finger on him.
Holden knew he shouldn’t think less of anyone for being scared of Roan. It was actually sensible. But Roan hadn’t done anything; he didn’t know Roan was superhuman. He just asked Gerald a single question. A guilty conscience made Gerald flip out like a total asshole. If only he knew there were several damn good reasons he should have been afraid of Roan.
Finally Gerald got up and headed toward the bathrooms, rolling the luggage behind him. Holden waited until he threw his empty coffee cup in a trash can and glanced at his phone for the tenth time as Gerald disappeared into the men’s room. Holden decided to wait about forty seconds, give or take a second or two on either side. He didn’t want to seem like he was following him.
Once he passed his self-imposed limit, he stood, stretched, and started toward the men’s room. He was vaguely aware that Hel had stood as well. She couldn’t follow them in—although she could probably pass for a guy, at least for the most part—but she could keep an eye on the door.
Holden left how he was going to play this to chance. If someone else was in there, he’d do it fast, so no witness would know what the hell happened. If there was just him and Gerald… he might have a bit more fun.
As it turned out, it was only the two of them. Good.
Once Holden was through with his casual scoping of the bathroom, Gerald was standing at the sink, washing his hands. He didn’t even look Holden’s way.
Holden paused, aware he could do a lot of things to this man before he knew what kind of trouble he was in. He fantasized about grabbing his head and breaking the sink off with his face, but that was a pipe dream. No regular human could do it, unless the sink was on the verge of collapsing anyway. He couldn’t copy Roan being that he was a mere human. Then he considered smashing Gerald’s head into the mirror, but it was that unbreakable plastic shit.
Holden walked right up beside Gerald, who never even glanced at him, obeying the awkward straight-guy’s code of never looking at another man in the bathroom. This allowed Holden to grab Gerald by the back of the head and slam his face into the edge of the sink.
As expected, Gerald’s face didn’t break the sink. But something definitely broke in his face, and as Holden shoved him back into the stall door, he asked, “Did you give Alexei that much warning?”
Gerald tried to stay on his feet but stumbled and fell butt-first onto the floor. He was holding his face, and blood oozed between his fingers. “What?”
“Oh good, are you going to play dumb? ’Cause I like bad acting. I don’t watch porn for the sex.”
Gerald glared at him, but his eyes were slightly glassy. Oh, did widdle bigot hurt his head? Since his skull wasn’t split and his brains weren’t visible, he hadn’t hurt it nearly enough. “What the fuck do you want?” Fuck sounded like fugg, so Holden guessed the snap he’d heard was Gerald’s nose. That explained all the blood.
“Justice, motherfucker. It’s unlikely Alexei’s going to get any, isn’t it? Not unless I take it.”
Gerald squinted at him through eyes filling with tears of pain. “Are you one of his students?”
Holden knew he didn’t look that young, but maybe the whole Goth drag had confused him. Which was okay because the more he mixed up his description for the cops, the better. “Did you really think you were getting away with this? What happens when Alexei remembers?”
Gerald mumbled something that sounded like a lot of clotted, blunted consonants and vowels, but Holden was able to piece it together into a low-key “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“We’re long past that, Gerry. I know you’re guilty, you know you’re guilty. There’s no one else here, so who’s the act for?”
Gerald sat there and looked down at the floor, seemingly in contrition. But Esteban had been big on teaching him how an opponent’s body language would generally telegraph their next move, if you knew what you were looking for. And now that Holden was sure of what to look for, he knew that Gerald was getting ready to spring. Holden could pull out his baton and put him down instantly, or do something even more humiliating. It was an easy decision.
To his credit, Gerald sprung up faster than Holden thought he could, being an older book-learning type of guy, although he’d been training for an iron-man-type competition, meaning he was more jacked than he had ever been in his life. Considering the amount of damage he did to Alexei, that made sense. He hid it in slouchy dad clothes, but he couldn’t have done so much damage if he was a real lardass.
He came at Holden faster than he’d expected, but still not fast enough. Gerald closed the distance between them and reached out to grab him, but Holden kicked his legs out from under him and stepped back, so the lurching pile of Gerald came nowhere near him. Gerald hit the floor, taking most of the impact on his chin, which really must have sucked. As soon as he was down, his hand was scrabbling for something on his back, and there was only one thing it could’ve been.
Holden snapped out his metal baton and slammed it down on Gerald’s arm, hard enough to either break something or make it temporarily numb. Holden didn’t care which. Gerald yelped and reflexively pulled his hand in, allowing Holden to step on his back and push him into the dirty tiles that made up the floor. There was a small bulge in the back of his pants, and Holden reached down and pulled out the culprit: a cute little gun, tiny, snub-nosed, almost looked like a toy. Probably really easy to conceal carry as well. Holden dropped to his knees, right on Gerald’s back, and jammed the barrel of the tiny gun hard into the back of his skull, mashing his face into the floor. Gerald went deathly still. “So why didn’t you shoot Alexei?” Gerald seemed to be in no hurry to answer, so Holden cocked the gun.
That seemed to motivate Gerald. “Bullets can be traced,” he said.
Yep, made perfect sense. “You planned this out for a while, didn’t you?”
He was quiet long enough that Holden thought he was going to have to prod him again, but before he could, he muttered, “I deserve tenure.”
Holden sighed. “Some people have the shittiest reasons for murder.”
“He’s not dead.” There was a sizable puddle of blood growing around Gerald’s head, and Holden figured he either had a gash on his chin or lost a tooth. A broken nose alone couldn’t hav
e been responsible for that.
“No, but you tried, didn’t you? Sorry, you don’t get a mulligan on an attempted manslaughter, Gerry.”
He muttered something under his breath, but Holden caught it anyway. He said, “Don’t call me that.”
“I’ll call you whatever I want, fuckhead. Who has the gun here?”
Gerald didn’t respond. He didn’t need to.
Holden had options he didn’t anticipate. He could actually kill Gerry in more than one way. He could even use the man’s own gun to splatter his brains across this bathroom. He initially planned to beat him with the baton and leave it to fate whether he survived or not. He had his knife with him, though, and stabbing was always on the table.
He heard a rap on the door, which he recognized as Hel’s knock. So he had limited time and needed to make the best of it.
What was he going to do with Gerry? Decisions, decisions.
23—Whatever
PURELY BY accident, Scott discovered he could put his phone in a certain place on his bedside table and its vibration would shake the whole thing, making a hellish amount of noise. That was a good thing because Scott, as a hockey player, had learned to sleep through lots of things. Getting him up could take small acts of extreme noise and violence. Scott liked to think of it as a “life hack,” but Grey said it was pure luck, and he’d be more than happy to continue waking Scott up by throwing him.
That wasn’t a joke. Grey would pick him up and throw him. Usually on his bed, sometimes in a chair, once in a bathtub. He occasionally liked to threaten to throw Scott down the stairs, but they both knew he wouldn’t do that. Grey didn’t want to aggravate any current or past injuries. Scott figured that maybe he should see some kind of sleep specialist eventually, to see if there was some medical reason he could sometimes sleep through a big ape like Grey picking him up and hauling him around like a slab of beef. Maybe the concussions were finally getting to him. Or it was his superpower, gained after so many sleepless nights on the road. He’d retrained his body to sleep any damn place.
