Shattered Glass

by Dani Alexander

  “He should be. I’m paying him enough.” Pulling away just in time for the phone to ring again, I answered it tersely and told Luis we were on our way. Again.

  The tension in the room had all but disappeared. Only my irritation at a discussion about Desmond Glass remained. “Let’s go.” The subject about my father was hopefully dropped for good.

  Speaking of parents, I hadn’t yet asked Peter about his conversation with his mother. I wondered if he’d be receptive to questions about her. Now that we were on better footing, would he open up to me? I was listing the various ways to broach the conversation as we stepped into the living room and found yet more obstacles to our leaving.

  Two of the FBI agents I’d seen surveilling the house that morning were in the living room. One was on the sofa and the other leaning against the mantle. They looked casually menacing in a way only men in semi-cheap suits could be.

  People Should Be What They Look Like, Dammit!

  From the kitchen, Rosa pounded something into oblivion while glaring at the living room. Cai, curled up in the arm chair, was doing some staring of his own, but with less of a glare than an interested gleam at the younger agent sitting on the sofa. I guessed younger, by the broad stretch of shoulders and the rich chestnut colored hair which stood in stark contrast to his aging counterpart across from him. They were the FBI version of Luis and me.

  “Detective Glass,” the older one nodded. “I’m agent—”

  Peter brushed past me and headed for Cai, pulling him out of the seat and speaking in tongues—or probably just Russian. Same difference.

  The younger agent turned around and stood up.

  “I haven’t said anything, Rabbit,” Cai protested, playing keep away with his arm. “And I don’t want to go to my room.” The scene would have been humorous if I hadn’t felt the sharp edges of an approaching headache.

  “Agent one and Agent two. That’s all I need to know right now. Whatever you’re here for, it’ll have to wait until I get back from the station. And I’m taking him.” I jerked a thumb at Peter.

  “They are here for me,” Rosa said.

  “Good. Then you can find a place for them to sleep, if they’re staying. But hear this—I’ve given up my living room, guest room, job, career, heterosexuality and my stance on no pets in the house, but I’m not giving up my room. I’m drawing a line.” Testosterone flowing, I grabbed Peter’s wrist and yanked him out the door, aiming us both toward the back of the courtyard. He didn’t make so much as a token resistance.

  I released his hand to open the gate to my private parking spot and swore under my breath at the new scene before me. I had forgotten about the press.

  Though there were only five or six talking heads, between the cameramen and giant cameras, it was overwhelming when they converged on us like rats on a fallen crumb. Questions and microphones flew at us as we waded through to the Jag. Neither Peter nor I answered, until one question halted Peter at the driver’s side door. My irritation grew exponentially by the second.

  “Changing teams, Austin?” Diane, a brunette with a pageant smile, had a hand propped on her hip and flecks of evil in her glossed lips.

  I flashed her a look of surprise, then quickly masked it. “Helping the unfortunate,” I clarified. “Your mother still dating your ex-husband?” I tossed the keys to Peter and leaned on the top of the car. “She always did like your leftovers.” Her brown eyes narrowed in anger and I knew she’d forget to ask about Peter, which was exactly why I’d chosen that particular subject change.

  She feigned casual laughter and shrugged. “Now both of us can talk about how much you suck in bed.”

  “Sucking in bed is probably why he’s changing teams.” Peter smiled benignly at her and flicked the door open.

  My eyes rolled to the afternoon sky and then closed, head hanging as I choked out laughingly, “That wasn’t the team she meant, Peter.” I didn’t have time to explain she meant associating with criminals, Peter was already behind the wheel with the door closed. “Give your mom my best.” I faked a smile and gingerly climbed into the car, slamming the door shut behind me just as she responded with, “Why? You never did.” Ouch.

  “Sorry,” Peter muttered, starting the car and slowly backing out. I wanted to push his foot down on the pedal and run over a few of the reporters. Diane first. It was weighing on me how many enemies I had created in less than two weeks.

  “I should create a list of ways to be unexpectedly outed: Partners discovering my obsession for a hustler, friends finding me half-naked with one, boyfriend announcing I suck cock to reporters.”

  The car jolted to a stop. I grabbed the dashboard before my head thunked into the windshield. “Boyfriend?” Peter asked, brows lifting.

  “I’m not backtracking.” I looked ahead, ignoring my jitterbugging heart, ignoring Peter and the reporters and the world; and my own inclination to, in fact, backtrack and say ‘boy and friend’; or sputter out some other kind of insincere denial.

  “Okay.”

  I eyed him sideways, searching for his reaction. Per usual, he showed me nothing but inscrutability. He shifted gears and pulled out of the alley.

  He was a careful driver. Something I didn’t expect from his hard living. Did that come from being caretaker to everyone around him? Peter was a forty-year-old parent living in a twenty-year-old’s porn-star body. “At some point all of this is going to catch up with me,” I said.

  “What is?”

  “Gay, boyfriend, job loss, career in the toilet, gay, criminals in my house, criminals in my bed.”

  “You said the gay thing twice.”

  “It deserves double billing.”

  “I like that best about you.”

  “I should hope so. Hard to be a boyfriend without the gay thing.”

  “Not the gay thing. The fact that you embrace every decision you make when you finally make one.”

  Oh. “I like your cock best.”

  “Liar.” He smiled. “You like my mouth.”

  “I like everything about you.” I watched him swallow hard and heard his breathing speed up. “Except that I come third, behind Cai and Darryl.”

  “You don’t,” he denied, pinching his brow.

  “Everyone does. As your boy— Whatever-I-am—”

  “I thought you said you were my boyfriend?”

  “That sounds juvenile.”

  “If the mentality fits…”

  “As your boyfriend,” I continued with a growl, “I’d like to be bumped up on the list. At least to above Darryl.”

  “There’s no list. There’s just,” he took a breath, “differences in interactions.”

  “I’d like a few interactions changed, then. Specifically those with your dick in, or near, Darryl.” Or anyone else.

  “Are you asking me for exclusivity?”

  Was I? “Yes.”

  “Because not too long ago—”

  “Things have changed since then.”

  “Since last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “What changed?”

  “You saw my naked ass.”

  “That was more significant than sucking your cock?”

  Yes. “You didn’t attempt to poke things up there,” I pointed out.

  “You’re hurt. I’m not sadistic.” He turned left, swinging the car along the curb as we arrived at The Manhole. “Next time I see your naked ass, don’t count on my self-control,” Peter said. A change of subject was in order.

  “I thought he was at the hospital?”

  “He was.” At that moment I knew Darryl had gone to the club to set up the gig as Peter had requested. I wasn’t going to think or talk about that. And neither was Peter, apparently.

  Darryl leaned against the wall just outside the entrance, dragging a finger down the chest of a man whose neck was nearly the size of Darryl’s waist. “He’s not going to the station like that.”

  “Okay.” The smile Peter gave me was tilting on the wrong side of malicious. “You�
��re going to tell him that?”

  “Yes,” I said cautiously.

  “Do you know what Darryl does here?” He honked the horn and pointed at The Manhole.

  “Bartender? Dishwasher? Go-go dancer?” I couldn’t remember what he’d said Darryl did. The latter seemed most likely. And though I’d been in few gay bars, I was sure somewhere I’d seen go-go dancers. Of course none of them were scrawny, if I recalled scenes from various Vice raids.

  “Part-time bartender. Part-time bouncer.”

  “He weighs less than my fist!” The subject of our discussion lifted a delicate finger off his prey’s oiled chest and held it up to us in a ‘one-minute’ gesture.

  “When you look like him, and your dad’s in the mob, you learn to take care of yourself. Ever since he saw The Matrix, he’s been obsessed with martial arts. Darryl’s got a black belt in Jiu-Jitsu.” My jaw unhinged like screws were yanked from under my ears.

  I focused on Darryl’s bright red jeans and the protruding hips jutting out of the waistband. Unconsciously I licked my lips, caught myself and deliberately turned to Peter who was eyeing me with interest. I was not checking Darryl out, goddammit.

  “People aren’t always who they seem, Detective. Am I anything like you thought?”

  “No,” I admitted. You’re a million times better than I could have imagined. And that was the problem. Looking at Peter, I realized that I was never going to get over him. A distressing thought when I considered I might not ever have Peter.

  “I like it when you look at me like that,” he murmured, lifting his fingers to my brow and tugging gently on the strands of hair that had escaped my gel. His hand smelled faintly of soap and leather. I turned my face to his wrist and gently pressed my lips against his pulse, inhaling to find a trace of his usual scent. The moment was so remarkably tender, I forgot to exhale for a few seconds. My pulse raced, demanding a new breath. It was exhilarating, but terrifying, to be this vulnerable in front of him.

  So, naturally, I had to ruin it.

  “That reminds me. Did you quit smoking?”

  His hand dropped, gripping the steering wheel once more. “Cai steals my cigarettes and flushes them.” He scowled. “I gave up.”

  Excellent. “Remind me to buy him a boat. Or an island. Or something useful for sixteen-year-olds. Like lobotomy equipment for his human experimentation.” Peter arched a brow and looked at me like I was green and from planet Zeezob; and then his gaze skirted to my left.

  Darryl knocked on the window. I got out and pushed up the seat so he could slide in. He folded into the backseat with a gentle “Toodles” to the big guy. “Dennis wants to take me to Hawaii,” he announced with a cross of his legs. I rolled my eyes and got back into my seat, carefully avoiding sitting in a way that might have me screeching like a ten-year-old girl.

  Darryl apparently noticed my scowl. “What goat horned his ass? If you plowed him so hard he can’t sit, Rabbit, he should be beaming with joy.”

  Peter’s shoulders shook. He turned away from me, not only to check for oncoming traffic, of that I was sure. “I thought maybe he was jealous of you and me, but now I think he just wants you,” Peter baited.

  I was not joining in this discussion. Eventually the subject changed to the house, their injured friend and the fire and what they had lost. The pictures, Cai’s paintings, books and little things, like Joe’s pipe and Cai’s last tooth. Things that I hadn’t even thought about. It reminded me, once again, that Peter was taking punches left and right and not even staggering. His maturity and resolve astounded me.

  There wasn’t any salvation from Peter at this point. I was falling too hard.

  “Another reason we’re going to the station,” I said. “You’ll both have to speak to an officer about the fires.” Just more shit to do for the Day That Never Ended.

  Austin Glass Starring in: Screwed Without Orgasm

  An hour later, Luis and I waited in a cramped room with the boxes of evidence from Alvarado’s house. We had sorted out the small and large baggies containing papers, passports, IDs and money, leaving the rest—weaponry, drugs and paraphernalia—in the evidence lockup. Peter, Darryl and my father were meeting with the officers investigating the fires in a separate interrogation room.

  It was just me and my partner, quietly going over evidence and giving wide berth to the elephant in the room. The elephant being the large number of rancid stares I had received as we entered, along with the large plastic rat that someone had planted on my desk. No one, not even Luis, who knew I was coming in, had hid that from my sight.

  “On a scale of one-to-ten, how screwed am I?” I lifted a bag, pretending to stare at the contents. I couldn’t concentrate on it. Couldn’t care less whose passport I held.

  “A hundred,” Luis grunted.

  I kept my smile, forced though it was, and lifted another baggy. “That’ll be my first hundred since high school biology.”

  Luis slammed down a stack of papers. “What the fuck are you doing with your life?”

  “Dating hookers, learning the gay, housing criminals, pissing off my fellow cops, and taking in what everyone says is a cat, but which I’m definitely sure is not a cat. I’m undecided on its actual species. I think it’s a cross between a rat and some kind of alien life—”

  “It’s all a big joke to you?”

  “No.” I sighed. “It’s all a big fucked up, confusing mess to me. What do you want me to do? Cry? Rant?”

  “How is this for funny. Del and Marco are looking into your connection to Alvarado’s murder.”

  “Now that is funny,” I murmured, no smile on my face now. If they wanted to connect me, there wasn’t much I could do. There wasn’t any evidence of my guilt, but I also had no proof of innocence.

  “You bring this on yourself with the shit you’re pulling.” Luis rubbed his forehead with his palm and dropped his hand hard onto the table.

  “Yeah, well, now I’m in too deep, Luis. There’s no way out. Even if I wanted one. Which I don’t. I’ll make peace with the end of my career. Some day. But I’m not on the wrong side here.”

  “You are so sure of this that you take me down with you? I trusted you, and you let your dick drag us both down into the sewer.”

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with my dick,” I shouted, knocking the chair back as I stood and barely feeling the resulting pain. I was finally filthy fucking pissed off. “It’s about right and wrong and a sixteen-year-old kid who was raped for hours by a drug-dealing pimp. Even if Cai is guilty, I’m on his side.”

  “Sit down.” Luis glowered and leaned back in his chair. I obeyed the order, but not without petulantly scraping the chair hard against the concrete floor. Luis pushed both hands through his hair. “It’s always these kids with you. I should have expected it. But look, I get the money you give them, and the calls to DHS, and I even get you shelling out for this kid’s lawyer. But all three of them living with you? Kids of men we work to put away? One of those kids is a killer; maybe they all are.”

  I crossed my arms over the table and leaned forward, my voice a loud, angry growl. “You’re not listening to me. For once in my fucking life, I’m not looking for a criminal. I don’t care if he did it. Get that? I don’t give a fucking shit. And if I lose everything because of this, so be it. I’m doing what’s ri—” I trailed off as I lost Luis’s interest. He was looking to my right. Peter, Darryl and my father stood in the doorway.

  Desmond Glass cast a disapproving curl of his lip at me. Darryl had the opposite kind of grin. And Peter? Peter’s smile held the sadness and despair I felt, and something else, too. I didn’t know what it meant, but it elicited a profound warmth in my chest.

  Career Plague

  The table spanned the majority of the room, and the evidence lay in piles covering almost every inch of it. Peter and Darryl were reaching left and right, exchanging items to be looked at and discarded.

  We were tightly slotted into our cookie package, three on one side—if my father cou
ld be counted as being on a ‘side’—and two on the other. Peter was to my left, Desmond in the corner to Peter’s left, and Darryl and Luis across from us. Elbow room was nonexistent, which was unfortunate because Peter’s kept brushing up against mine, drawing attention to his pale, freckled arm and making me lose track of why we were there. I kept wanting to trace through the soft copper hair dusting from elbow to wrist.

  But my predicament wasn’t half as uncomfortable as Luis’s. When Darryl stretched for an item across Luis, he made sure to brush against him: a shoulder against a shoulder, his hand skimming Luis’s, his face just close enough to be awkward. My partner’s responses were like a spastic attack. He scooted sideways, yanked his hand away, jerked his head back. I spent so much time laughing at Luis’s reactions that I was instantly aware when Darryl suddenly lost interest in pestering my partner. A frown passed over his elfin face. He leaned across the table and began to push baggies around, lifting them in quick succession.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked.

  Luis removed his palm from his brow, his eyes darting after Darryl’s hands. “Something you don’t see?”

  “The beer place,” Darryl responded absently.

  Peter sat up and began helping. “Right. I remember that.”

  “Beer place doesn’t help much.” Neither of them looked at me.

  “Not beer,” Peter said, “Lager.”

  “Yeah, Lager. That was it. It’s not here.”

  “Lager? Was that a name or an inventory item?” I started reading through the papers and tax forms they’d dropped.

  “Neither,” Darryl said, pulling a large pile in front of him and following my lead with slow reading. “I just remember Rabbit ‘n’ me having this laugh about how they probably did really well at Oktoberfest because we saw the address was on the mall, and it said 'barn lager'. Which probably didn’t sell at any other time of the year.” The mall must’ve meant the 16th Street Mall, where every year an Oktoberfest celebration was held. “Like who drinks beer from a barn?”