by Andrea Speed
Even though it was a clear and briskly cold night, Paris thought they should take the motorcycle. Roan thought he was nuts, but Paris pointed out that Sullivan’s sounded like a macho kind of place, and the bike would be a perfect fit. Since he had seen Paris giving himself another shot of B-12, Roan felt like he didn’t have the will to argue with him.
He couldn’t even remember the last time they took the bike out, except when they had a car to pick up. And why? He had no idea. The bike was undoubtedly fun.
And cold. Very very cold. So that’s why they hadn’t taken it out lately.
They both wore leather jackets and helmets, and yet Roan could feel the cold biting through his jeans, rendering his hands numb beneath barely insulated leather gloves, and while Paris felt warm, his arms around Roan’s waist and his body pressed up against his back, he wondered if Paris was freezing. Lately, the slightest breeze could send him into paroxysms of shivers.
Sullivan’s had a parking lot that was half asphalt and half gravel, although he thought the gravel part was a mistake—the asphalt had simply worn away there until it crumbled to dust. The outside of the bar was a basic box shape, its color now indistinguishable from the layers of road dust that stained the outside, and its small windows looked as amber as beer, covered with neon signs advertising domestic brews and flyers about the new smoking laws that relegated smokers to a small shack off to the side of the building. Roan was surprised they were even pretending to follow the law, because this place looked like it would have a constant miasma of cigarette smoke helpfully blinding the patrons from the true depression of their surroundings.
Going in with Paris, he could smell it, the faint odor of cigarette smoke still in the walls and on the clothes of the patrons, if not exactly fresh in the air. The place was so dark it was like being submerged. The only true light came from the ones above the bar, yellowed like old smoker’s teeth, minimizing the pits and burns in the worn semicircular bar and the acne-scarred bartender, and leaving the rest of the room, the small tables and back booths, swathed in thick shadows. His eyes adjusted quickly, and Paris took off his helmet first and smiled at Trey, approaching his back booth, and Roan took off his helmet and followed him, making sure Trey didn’t see him until the last second.
When he did, the beaming smile Trey had given Paris died on his face. Trey was a slender, almost willowy Vietnamese man with undeniably handsome features, rendered much more interesting by his somewhat flawed skin. Trey’s eyes scudded between them, noticing their leather jackets and helmets were both similar, and he asked Paris, “What the fuck is this?”
Paris slid into the fake leather booth across the small, beer-stained rectangular table from him, and said, “Sorry sweetheart. I think I forgot to tell you I was married.”
“Married?” he blurted, horrified, remembering on the last syllable to lower his voice. Luckily, the whiny country music coming from an unseen radio was loud enough to drown out most conversations.
Roan kept standing at the end of the booth, just in case Trey made a break for it. “My name is Roan McKichan; I’m a private detective; I’m looking into the death of Thora Bishop. Can you tell me where you were between the hours of seven and ten p.m. on the night of November second?”
Trey stared at him and swallowed hard, eyes darting between him and Paris like he still didn’t see the connection between them. To help him, Paris started tapping his ring against the table top, twisting it as well, just so Trey would look at it. Trey then glanced back at Roan, looking at the hand holding the motorcycle helmet, and noticed the matching ring on his finger. His dark eyes widened in genuine surprise. “I didn’t think that was legal,” he muttered, glancing around the room as if to make sure no one saw him with this pair of raging queens. No one was even paying attention to any of them.
“Are you going to answer my question?” Roan asked.
Trey glared at him, surprise turning to sullenness. “Why should I? You’re not a cop.”
“Would you rather have them involved? Just give me a minute and I’ll get them down here.”
Trey didn’t answer, he just kept glaring at him, so Roan took out his cell phone. That seemed to kick him out of his sulk. “Fine. I was working, if it’s any of your goddamn business. Chrissie’s off on maternity leave and I was covering her shift. Happy now?”
That would be easy enough to check out. “You worked two shifts that day?”
“Yeah.”
“You hardly need the money.”
That earned him a new glower of contempt. “It spares me from goin’ home, okay?” Trey then looked away with a slight wince, as if he knew he’d said too much.
He wasn’t lying. “What about November fourth between six and eight-thirty p.m.?”
Trey was still radiating open waves of hostility, but he answered the question. “I was getting my teeth cleaned. My dentist is Doctor Marvin Chu, he works over in Redmond. I was probably on the road driving to there or back from there for part of the time. Maybe he can give you exact times, ’cause I really wasn’t paying too much attention. I hate going to the dentist.”
“A dentist named Chu?” Paris replied. “How funny.” Both Roan and Trey glared at him, but all he did was meet their gazes innocently. “What? You know it is.”
He loved Paris, he really did, but sometimes he was such a goofball. Roan pulled out a tiny notebook and pen and wrote down the important information on it, keeping the corner of his eye fixed on Trey to see if the fact that he was taking notes made him nervous. It didn’t. He was pissed off, and if he thought he had a decent chance of actually landing a hit on Paris’s pretty face he’d have done so, but he was not afraid of getting caught in a lie. “Look, are you done humiliating me?”
“Our intent was never to humiliate you, Mr. Phan,” Roan assured him. “I simply wanted to make sure we were getting the truth in a setting where you’d be disinclined to cause a scene.”
He sat back in his seat, crossing his arms over his chest. He was wearing a clean, possibly brand-new dark red polo shirt over black cargo pants. He looked reasonably nice, especially for a guy who expected a quick fuck in the back of his car. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning I’m aware of your history. You have a temper, don’t you?”
Trey snorted in disgust, shaking his head. “I was never charged with anything.”
“Wrong. You were arrested, and charges were leveled against you, but for some reason they were dropped. And that doesn’t count throwing a chair through a window at Laurel Springs.”
That made him look up sharply at Roan, eyes narrowing dangerously, the skin of his face flushing so lightly that it was almost impossible to see in the low light of the bar. He fought hard to get it under control, but it wasn’t easy; his hands clenched and unclenched, fists that wanted a target, and a tiny bit of sweat was now visible at his hairline. After a moment, where he swallowed so hard it was an audible, dry click in his throat, he whispered harshly, “Who told you that? Who the fuck told you that? Was it Matt, is that it? What did that little faggot say about me?”
Paris shot a glance at Roan, and he knew Par wanted to take this. It was unorthodox, but he let him go ahead. “That little faggot may be your only genuine friend in this world,” Paris told Trey, sitting forward and leaning his arms on the grotty table. He kept his voice pitched at a whisper, mimicking Trey’s own inflections. “And I have no idea why, because you’re a pent-up, angry little man who doesn’t deserve it. So don’t take your sexual frustrations out on him, or on us for that matter. We’re out and we’re good with it. Maybe you should give it a try, Trey. The world doesn’t end.”
This little speech didn’t please Trey. In fact, the flush that had slightly darkened his skin seemed to get worse, and he narrowed his eyes at Paris until they were mere slits. “I am not one of you,” he snarled. “I’m not a faggot.”
“One of us, one of us,” Roan said quietly, mockingly. Trey shot him a homicidal look for it. What, had he never seen the movie Freaks?
Paris just smirked at Trey and shook his head in a slow, dismissive way. “Oh please. The moment you laid eyes on me you got a hard-on. Believe me, I know the second the blood rushes out of a guy’s brain. So you’re turned on by guys—so what? Who really gives a fuck nowadays? Just live your life and stop worrying about other people.”
If looks could kill, Paris would have been a gory splatter on the dusty floor. “Fuck off and die, you little pansy faggot. I’m not like you. I’m normal.”
“Ooh, normal,” Par taunted. “Like meeting a guy you hardly know in a dive bar for a date. Very normal. No worries there, Trey.”
Before Trey could attack him or perhaps throw over the table, Roan decided to get things back on topic. “Did you want Thora Bishop dead?”
This topic shifting seemed to be bewildering Trey, which was the point. He was so off balance that lying would take a great deal of effort, and would be patently obvious, even without the sniff test. “Fuck yeah, I wanted that little bitch dead. She had no right to say anything about any of us. Our parents paid big bucks to get us all into Laurel Springs just for the anonymity—otherwise we could have just gone to some low-rent clinic somewhere. But I didn’t do it.”
“Do you know who might have?”
He scoffed. “Any of us. I’m not happy she’s dead, but she was asking for it, rubbing it in our faces like that.”
The way he said that, a new possibility sprang to life. “She wasn’t blackmailing you, was she?”
A troubled look flickered through his dark eyes. That thought had never occurred to him. “No.”
“What about any of the others?”
He both shrugged and shook his head. “I dunno. I guess she could, but she’d be stupid to try. Then again, she wasn’t a rocket scientist.”
“Was there anyone in your group who had a lot to lose if Thora went ahead and published?”
“Besides you, of course,” Paris added with an unfriendly smile.
Trey glared at him, and it was funny to see lust and hate warring in one man’s expression. Funny and disturbing; he almost wasn’t sure that Trey could tell the difference between them anymore. If he didn’t learn how to simply deal with who he was and what he wanted, Trey was a ticking time bomb—he was dangerous. One day, he was going to go off on someone and really hurt them. Roan had seen his kind a million times before, usually being shoved in the back of a police car.
“I don’t know. Ask them.”
“We intend to,” Roan said, and jerked his head back toward the door. Paris got the message and stood up, giving Trey a more friendly, pitying smile.
Roan took a card out of his pocket and handed it to Trey. “Feel free to call me if you think of anything else.”
Trey glanced at the card, then stared at him levelly as he balled up the card and tossed it on the floor. Roan just nodded in understanding, and walked back toward the door. Paris followed, and sarcastically blew Trey a kiss.
Once outside, Paris commented, “What a miserable bastard.”
“Well, he was expecting to get laid. You can understand if he’s a bit grumpy.” He didn’t tell Paris he expected to see Trey on the front page in a couple of months, arrested for some grisly beating or another. Maybe Trey would wise up, get therapy before that happened; in fact, he hoped so, because he was already pitying that future victim. Maybe a guy he was attracted to who didn’t like the closeted thing; maybe that poor girl suckered into being his fiancée.
“Oh come on! Look at me. Did he really think he had a shot?” Paris grinned at his own vanity, and then pulled his helmet back on, hiding his gleeful expression.
On the ride over to the office, Roan considered this alternate possibility: blackmail. There was no proof that she was attempting it, and she didn’t need the money, but blackmail was only partially about money—it was mostly about control. And Thora was a woman who obviously craved control in her life. But did she have any information damaging enough to be worth money, or worth her life? Maybe Matt would have some insight.
Once they parked in the lot and he saw Matt’s BMW, he took off his helmet and told Paris, “I’d like to talk to him alone, okay? I don’t want him to think he has a way out. I want him feeling psychologically cornered.”
Paris took off his helmet and fixed him with a stern look as he automatically smoothed down his mussed hair. “Go easy on him. He’s still the client, you know.”
“I know. I won’t smack him around.”
“Promise?” Paris grinned at his own joke and got off the bike, planting a kiss on his forehead. “I see the light’s on in Braunbeck’s office. I think I’ll go bug him and see how he likes it.”
“If he offers to show you how gorp is made, say no.”
That made Paris smile, but for the first time, Roan noticed that Paris looked kind of tired. In spite of the second shot of B-12, maybe this was all just too much for him. Paris headed off across the parking lot of the office complex, waving at Matt as he got out of his car and headed over. Matt paused halfway to their office, and said, “Whoa, nice-looking bike. What kind is it?”
“A Buell Lightning.”
“Huh. I’ve never heard of them.”
“I don’t think they’re as well-known as some other bikes.” Roan got his keys out and opened his office door, and Matt followed him in as he flipped on the lights. It was cool inside, and the flowers looked like they were finally giving it up, or Randi hadn’t been in to switch them yet. He didn’t bother to go into his office, as there was no point. He simply offered Matt a chair and sat on the edge of Paris’s desk, asking him questions about Thora’s family.
Matt continued to insist he didn’t know anything, really, but after a bit of prodding he admitted that Thora had totally avoided her brother Jay (Adam Bishop III) at Crystal’s wedding. “She didn’t say why, except he was the biggest dick in the family, and she didn’t mean it in a good way,” he explained. “She said he was the golden boy and a total creep, that the family let him get away with murder. She hated him. Luckily, he just made a brief appearance with his trophy wife and left.”
“And that’s all you know? She never said why she hated him?”
“No.” He paused briefly, biting his lower lip. “But….”
Roan sighed, scrubbing his hands through his hair. Maybe antidepressants were bad for Matt. He was much more forthcoming off of them. “Yes?”
“She once said the family picked him over her.”
“How so? In what way?”
He shrugged helplessly, holding up his empty hands. “She never said. I asked, but she didn’t go into it.”
“Fine. I guess that’s something to go on.”
But as he stood up, Matt looked troubled, almost queasy. “Look, don’t… don’t go after Jay, okay?”
Roan met his blue eyes fearlessly, trying to see what Matt was hiding. He was nervous and scared, but the reason wasn’t obvious. “Why not?”
Matt seemed to fidget while standing in place, as if something was itching beneath his skin and he was under orders not to scratch. “He’s an arrogant prick. A powerful arrogant prick.”
“So?”
“So?” he repeated in disbelief. “He could crush you. He could put you out of business with one phone call. Thora used to say he loved to show off how powerful he was, that he loved to be cruel just ’cause he could be.”
“Interesting. That makes him all the more suspicious.” He walked toward the front door, but Matt grabbed his arm as he walked past.
Roan looked down at Matt’s hand on his arm, and Matt seemed horrified by his own reflex and quickly let him go, taking a step back, as if afraid he’d invaded Roan’s personal space. “Sorry. It’s just… I met him only the once, and he freaked me out, you know? He seemed… I dunno. Mean.”
He nodded, wondering if Matt’s pills were wearing off. “Fine. I like taking mean people out. It’s fun.”
“Roan… please. He’s really homophobic. He hates gays.”
Roan shrugged and
resumed course for the door. “I wasn’t going to wear a feather boa during my interview with him. Well, not if it didn’t match the rest of my outfit.”
“I’m serious! Don’t… what about Paris?”
He looked back at Matt, his hand on the doorknob. “What about Paris?”
“He doesn’t… he needs you right now, Roan. And if something happened to you—”
“You’re being absurd,” he said sharply, perhaps a bit more harshly than he intended, judging by the way Matt’s head snapped back. “Nothing’s going to happen to me. If he’s a murderer, Matt, need I remind you that you and Hannah hired me to uncover it? If he wants to take a shot at me, he’s free to, but I don’t go down that easy.”
He opened the door and stomped out into the parking lot, and wondered why the hell Matt would throw Paris’s name and condition out like a weapon. That really pissed him off. He didn’t care how freaked out Matt was by Jay Bishop—that was uncalled for.
Of course he came out to find Paris leaning against the motorcycle, eating gorp out of a small plastic sandwich bag. As he approached, Paris held it out and said, “Want some? I’m just eating the M&Ms.”
Even in the faint illumination from the nearby streetlights and the few lights coming from the businesses still open in this office park, he could see how hollow and exhausted Paris looked, how darkness carved crescents beneath his eyes and made his cheekbones seem like razor blades ready to slice through his skin. It was time to take him home, and hope death was so far away it was just a faint blip on the horizon. “I’ll pass.”
As Matt came out, Roan went back to shut off the lights and lock the door, and Paris must have thought nothing of the uncomfortable silence between him and Matt, as he offered Matt some of the gorp as well. Matt also turned it down, and that’s when Paris asked, “Did Thora have a favorite drink?”
Matt shared a puzzled glance with him. “Y’mean when she was drinking? Um, yeah, she liked Aqueducts.”
Now Roan shared the puzzled look with Paris. Roan had never been a dedicated drinker, but Con had been, and he was sure he’d heard of every drink that had ever existed, especially since Con had briefly been a bartender back in Ireland. Paris, being a Canadian and a former party whore, also seemed to know a thing or two about drinking. But what the hell was this? “Is that a real drink?” Roan asked first.
