PsyCop 5: Camp Hell

by Jordan Castillo Price

  “I’m relieved that I don’t have to break the ice. See, empaths and telepaths? They’re everywhere. But mediums are few and far between.” Dreyfuss wiped some salt off his parka sleeve. “I’m gonna put this out there—and don’t answer me, not now. Just think about it. But I could really use someone like you on my team.”

  I’ve never liked the word team. I’ve always equated it with being picked last and getting nailed in the groin with a dodgeball.

  “Ah-ah.” Dreyfuss held up his raggedly-cuticled forefinger. “Like I said, don’t answer me now. I’m not asking you to quit your day job. The whole thing would be totally discreet, and I’d make it worth your while.” He stared at me hard. “Really…worth your while.”

  I wondered what that meant, exactly. I must have looked like I was considering his offer.

  “Cash? Or…Seconal. I really can hook you up.”

  I held my arm tight to my side, because I could practically feel my knuckles sinking into his face.

  “Or new stuff that’s not even on the market yet, something that’ll blow Auracel out of the water.”

  “Didn’t your files tell you that I’m a shitty guinea pig? The last time one of you slipped me a new psy-drug, he ended up in prison.”

  “That wasn’t us. Roger Burke thought of that little scheme without any help from the FPMP. And besides, that was a psyactive. I’m talking anti-psyactive. One that doesn’t come with a headache and an upset stomach. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ve got other things to offer, too. You want to catch up with some of your old friends from Heliotrope Station? I can find out where they are.”

  “The ones who are still alive.”

  “Or not. That’s never stopped you from talking to anyone. Has it?”

  • • •

  The thought of the FPMP following me around had me so spooked that I didn’t trust my cell. I swung by a battered payphone covered with stick-on tags that read Hello, My Name Is... with blocky, illegible, tagger-looking scribbles in the name slots beneath. I dug a quarter out of my pocket and made a call. To kill some time, I drove around for a while, then picked up my de-sweated suit from the dry cleaners.

  Once it seemed like I’d dawdled enough, I stopped at SaverPlus. I walked through the whole store, from activewear to home and garden, and tried to figure out which of the other shoppers was watching me. Before I met Dreyfuss, I would’ve been looking for men who looked like cops. But now I was open to the possibility that the ninety-year-old woman with the walker or the obese guy with the pop-bottle glasses could’ve been working for the FPMP, too.

  It was a couple hours until store closing, but the portrait studio was dark. I slipped past the fake tree background and down a narrow hallway, to the old bathrooms that were too dingy to even consider using unless you were in severe intestinal distress.

  I ducked into the men’s room. Crash was perched on the countertop beside the sink. His eyes locked onto mine. He hopped down and walked toward me, hands on hips. He wore a scuffed biker’s jacket, tight jeans, and combat boots spray-painted purple. His green hair had faded a few shades since the last time I’d seen him.

  I looked over my shoulder at the door. There was no lock, but there was a rubber wedge on the floor that could be used to hold the door open—or shut. I crammed it underneath.

  Crash was right up against me when I turned back around. “This cloak-and-dagger act gives me a hard-on like nobody’s business,” he said. “I can’t believe you touched a payphone. Who knows where that handset has been?”

  “Would you quit it?” I edged past him, even though there was really nowhere to go. “I need to talk.”

  “Your mouth says no, but your guts say yes. ‘Cos if no really meant no, I’d stop trying.”

  “Stop thinking with your dick for ten seconds and tell me if you’ve ever heard of the FPMP.”

  He backed up, hitched his thumbs into his pockets and rocked on the balls of his feet. “Sounds alphabetical. What do they call themselves for short, F-Pimp?”

  I leaned against the wall, closed my eyes, and tried to go to a happy place. I was out of practice. “It’s not funny.”

  I heard the countertop creak as Crash launched himself back up beside the rust-stained sink. “Apparently not.” I opened my eyes. His feet were dangling. He stared at me and swung them. “Sorry. Doesn’t ring any bells. Want me to look it up online?”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t. They’re the Federal Psychic Monitoring Program. They’re the ones who keep me off the Internet.”

  Crash’s eyes widened. “Oh, shit. Be careful.”

  “Why do you think I asked you to meet me here?”

  He raked his tongue barbell over his lower teeth, and leered.

  “Look,” I told him. “I don’t know what to do. They offered me a job.”

  He picked at a few threads that were starting to unravel over his knee where the denim had worn thin. “Might be a good idea. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. But I take it you’re not here for my blessing.”

  “You could tell if they were lying. Right?”

  “Whoa, whoa. You want me to put myself on the radar of the psychic CIA?”

  “So you can’t? You’re always walking around with your hand on your stomach like you’re getting a read off anything that breathes. I just thought….”

  “Nice try, but I’m enough of an empath to know when you’re baiting me.”

  Damn. I’d been hoping Crash would jump at the chance to do something subversive. And I guess I had been baiting him. “Maybe you could do it over the phone. I can get a new cell, one of those pay-as-you-go things….”

  “No can do. Not on the phone. It doesn’t work that way.”

  “But you can tell. When someone’s lying.”

  He took his cigarette pack out of his pocket and turned it around longingly. “Not like Carolyn. She’s a telepath—she hears people’s mental process in words.”

  “But…?”

  He unfolded the foil, touched the edges of the filters, then folded the foil back down and tucked his cigarettes away. “Yeah. If I tune in to that part of my head, I get an impression. I can usually tell.”

  “Seriously. I don’t know what to do. I wish I could ignore them and they’d just go away, but I don’t see it happening. If I don’t go along with them, is that gonna put me on their shit list? And what about my friends? What about Jacob?”

  “What about Jacob? I’m guessing you haven’t told him, or he’d be all over this.”

  I stared hard at the ugly brown floor tile.

  “Going behind Mister Perfect’s back. That’s fucking hilarious. You guys think you’re so virtuous because you both fall into the same bed every night, but I’ll bet you haven’t had a single conversation that was a hundred percent honest. You know what? You two deserve each other.”

  What could I say? That was probably true.

  -ELEVEN-

  There was a note on the fridge for me when I got home that read, “I’m at the gym—really.” Given that I was the one who’d just snuck off to see Crash and I hadn’t run into Jacob, I believed it.

  I was dying to ask Lisa if the cannery was bugged, but I didn’t trust that either my e-mail or my phone was secure. What could I do, write her a letter? For all I knew, the FPMP had access to our mail, too.

  I was sitting on the bed, staring at the wall when Jacob got home. Either he didn’t think I looked too crazy, or that’s pretty much how I always look. “What’s up?” he said.

  “C’mere. Lay down with me a sec.” I flipped the TV on and hit the DVD. It picked up where we’d left off—in the middle of a four-way blowjob chain that took place in a motel room with furniture worse than the stuff in my old apartment. I raised the volume.

  Jacob peeled off his sweatshirt and started to undo his jeans. “Leave that,” I said. “C’mere.”

  He climbed into bed and grabbed me by the head. I turned my mouth away from his kiss and spoke directly in his ear. “I have to tell you someth
ing. But I think they’re listening.” Which sounded incredibly paranoid, I realized, but only after I’d said it.

  Jacob covered my mouth with his, then kissed his way along my jaw until his lips were against my ear. “Who?”

  “The Federal Psychic Monitoring Program. They’re real. They’ve got guys at the Fifth. And I talked to one of the head honchos today.” I thought that’s what Dreyfuss was, anyway. Regional…something. Damn.

  “All right.” Jacob’s voice was just a breath. And above it, someone on the TV yelled, Hoo yeah, suck it, suck it good. Three other guys moaned in reply. “What is it?”

  “They asked me to do some kind of job for them. But I think it’s really a test.”

  Jacob took the remote and cranked it to the max. The one guy who didn’t have a dick in his mouth went, “Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah,” in a really nasal and repetitive way, but at least it covered up our conversation.

  Jacob covered my body with his and pressed a kiss to the side of my neck. Damn. I’m such a sucker for the neck. I shifted and tried to shake off the creep of arousal. And failed. The sound of three dicks getting sucked and one guy moaning and groaning wasn’t helping.

  “How dangerous is this job?” Jacob whispered.

  “Dunno.”

  “And what if you say no?”

  “Don’t know that either…but they’re everywhere. I don’t think ignoring them is an option.”

  I felt Jacob’s cock against my thigh. Stiff. Crash was right, we did deserve each other.

  Jacob slipped a hand under my T-shirt and brushed his fingers over my nipple. I gasped, but the sound was drowned out by a couple of guys encouraging one guy kneeling between them to suck them off at the same time while the fourth guy kept up the yeah-yeah business. “Do what you need to do,” Jacob said against my ear.

  I eased my hand between us and snuck it down the waistband of his jeans. I had no idea what I needed to do with the FPMP. But I knew how I could stop thinking about them, if only for a few minutes.

  Jacob pushed himself off me and undid his fly. I struggled to get my T-shirt over my head while I was flat on my back. Jacob shoved the shirt up around my neck and dove for one of my nipples while I was tangled up in it. He sucked, hard, and my back arched. I made a sound that was nothing like the hypnotic uhn-uhn-uhn noises on the DVD, something desperate and raw that he’d coaxed from deep in my throat.

  When I finally tugged my shirt off, Jacob trailed a long lick up my neck. I made another guttural noise. He pressed his mouth to my ear. “Can they see us?”

  “Dunno.”

  Jacob sat back, unsnapped my fly and pulled off my jeans, then his. His cock stood away from his body. It bulged with veins—but so did the rest of him, his arms, his neck, his thighs—fresh from the gym and looking as if his skin could hardly contain him.

  He grabbed my leg and pushed my knee to my chest. His mouth covered my ass and he teased me with his tongue.

  “Fuck yeah,” I said. It was lost among all the theatrical grunting on the TV.

  He pushed his thumb inside me and engulfed my balls in the furnace of his mouth. I held my cock against my stomach, gave it a few absent strokes. Mostly I reveled in the heat and the wetness, and the feel of Jacob going at me like he was starving.

  He shoved my leg up harder. My knee was buried in the pillow beside my head, my ass pointed up toward the ceiling, and I struggled to breathe. Fingers, tongue—he stroked and licked and fingered me until I was giddy from lack of air.

  “Jacob, I’m gonna….”

  He raked his teeth over my taint, tongued my ass.

  “Fuck….” My body tried to uncoil itself, but Jacob held me there with my ass in the air and I couldn’t have moved if I’d wanted to. I got off on it too, the idea that my ass was his and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. I clenched up all over and made a strangled noise, and felt the hot spatter of jiz on my neck and face.

  Jacob’s tongue invaded my ass in time with my spurts, so hot and so wet, and I wondered if I might pass out from lack of air and I didn’t give a damn, because the strangle factor had made for such a sweet, throbbing orgasm.

  But then Jacob did let up, and my back protested as I unrolled. But only as far as his veiny slab of cock.

  I felt his knuckles as he lined himself up. Then his cockhead. I dropped my knees open and focused on the feel of him pushing in. I was used to the girth of him by now, but like this, with nothing but spit between us, he felt twice as big. He paused with just the head in me, ran his palms over my heaving belly. I had to have enough air in my lungs by now—maybe I was hyperventilating. It felt awesome, like I was flying.

  He eased in another couple of inches. I felt like his cock was gonna split me in half. I flexed my back and tried to bury him deeper. He fit his hands over my hipbones, and his fingers covered the marks he’d made on me before, the last time we’d had sex, or the time before that, or the time before that.

  And there was something so amazing about that, being with someone, night after night, trusting him like that. Or maybe it was the lack of air. But it felt incredible.

  I reached under my ass and cradled Jacob’s balls. He sank in deeper and then pulled out. He spat into his cupped hand, gave his cock a once-over, then prodded it in again. “Yeah,” I said, loud, so he could hear me over the dull roar of the repetitively enthusiastic kids on the DVD. “Feels good.”

  He chewed his upper lip for a second, then twitched himself in deeper still. I panted and winced—God, it burned—and pulled on his balls to urge him to sink it all the way in.

  He moved slow and steady, deeper with each thrust. His balls shifted in his scrotum, and the skin wrinkled against my fingertips. The kids on the DVD whooped—it was the part where the one on his knees took three loads to the face. I always liked that part, and I usually backed up and watched it a few times in a row just for the hell of it.

  Jacob reached for my face and thumbed my jiz off my cheek. He sank his thumb into his mouth, his glistening, wet mouth, and sucked it clean.

  He had me hard again. I grabbed my cock and started pumping.

  Jacob hitched his hand under my knee and pulled one of my legs up and over his shoulder. He turned his head and tongued the sinew behind my knee. His goatee scraped my bare, wet skin. His other hand roamed my stomach and chest, traced glistening trails in the come I’d already shot.

  Credits rolled on the DVD, and under the lettering, outtakes where the guys stopped acting porno and talked and laughed while they polished each others’ rods. I liked that, too, seeing them being normal guys together.

  And I wondered if Jacob and I were performing for someone who might be listening, even watching. Or if we were just us.

  Jacob’s thrusts grew steady, faster, and the muscles in his stomach hardened.

  His body arched and he threw his head back. His neck was a column of muscle and vein, and his whole body seemed to pulse and throb. He pulled out, trailing wet come, and shot part of his load on my balls. I felt a thread of spit and semen trickle out of my ass, and stroked myself off until I came again. Just a couple of deep, heaving twitches, and a new spatter of jiz on my belly.

  My leg dropped from Jacob’s shoulder. My belly heaved as I sucked air. I felt like I was totally covered in spunk, like the kid who’d been shot on by three other guys. My ass was raw.

  Jacob planted his hands on either side of my head and lowered himself over me. He could probably hold that push-up position for hours without breaking a sweat. His lips barely touched mine. “Wake me up early,” he said, his breath hot against my mouth. “We’ll go for a walk.”

  He held my gaze. He didn't look very happy, for someone who’d just come on my balls. He stared at me hard, and I couldn't keep the eye contact. I started to turn on my side, but I was covered in semen. I reached over the side of the bed, and grabbed his sweatshirt. I wiped myself off. Jacob turned out the light. I rolled over, and he fit himself against my back. Somehow, in the dark, the idea that someone else
could’ve been watching us, could still be listening, seemed even scarier than it had while we were having sex. I didn't say anything, and either did he. Eventually, Jacob fell asleep. I watched the clock until eleven, then twelve. I guess I fell asleep before one.

  Even so, I woke up before Jacob did. I turned on the coffee then came back upstairs and shook him. His eyebrows drew down, as if he'd been free of me as he slept, but now that he'd woken up, he had to settle back in to this life the two of us had created. He opened a drawer on his bedside table, and rummaged around inside. He came up with the stub of a pencil and an old receipt. He wrote so small I could hardly see it.

  Separate cars. Horner Park.

  He crumpled up the note, pulled on some clothes, and left.

  Was it paranoid of him to write that down? Or was it smart? Maybe I should look up some of my paranoid compadres from the nuthouse. The super-paranoid ones—the real schizophrenics who actually looked crazy, the ones with facial tics who did weird things with their tongues, who hoarded moldy food under their beds and wore a dozen layers of clothes whether the temperature was nine degrees or ninety. They would be able to tell me how to watch my ass.

  I got dressed, filled up my travel mug, and left. It was just after five, and there was almost no traffic. I saw Jacob’s car in a lot and kept driving halfway around the block, where I parked near the baseball diamond. Snow covered the field, and there were old tracks that led to the dugout, which was surrounded by beer cans and cigarette butts, and if I got close enough to see more details, probably used condoms. I followed the sidewalk around the park with my hands stuffed in my pockets and my breath streaming out behind me. I walked until I came to a concession stand that was boarded up for the winter, and I slipped around back.

  Jacob leaned against the back of the stand in his black leather jacket with his hands in his pockets. "These people. You really think they can hear us in our house?"

  "Maybe."

  He let his breath out slowly. It traveled away from him in a stream of vapor. "I don't like it. But other than going along with them, I don't see what else you can do. It’s not like there’s anyone you can tell. And it’s not like there’s anywhere we can go."