Red Fish, Dead Fish

by Amy Lane

  “See you tomorrow.”

  She hung up, and he ordered room service like he’d promised and then spent an hour answering routine e-mails. After he sent the last one, he closed his laptop with finality and turned his chair to watch Jackson sleep.

  “Food coming?” Jackson mumbled, not surprising him. A true sleep would be too much to ask for.

  “Yes—a couple of minutes, I think. Hungry?”

  Jackson sat up in bed a little. “Cold,” he said, voice husky. “Want to join me in bed?”

  Ellery laughed shortly. “Not until food comes. I see what you’re trying to do here, and I will not be caught bare-assed naked in front of the bellhop.”

  Jackson gave him a choirboy’s smile, and Ellery rolled his eyes. “Our case—it’s not over yet.” He told Jackson about Harold Knudsen and the reason Karl Lacey really had to be investigated.

  Now Jackson nodded thoughtfully. “You want to look into them after Thanksgiving?”

  Ellery shook his head. “After Christmas,” he said softly. “I still need to go to temple a couple of times, just to make sure.”

  Jackson frowned. “I thought we were holy and shit.”

  God. He was so beautiful, and Ellery had just gotten him back. “No, love. He gave you back to me. I need to make sure you’re going to stay a while before we go back into the wilderness, okay?”

  Jackson didn’t seem to know where to look, but that was okay. Ellery was on the verge of embarrassing himself anyway. Room service knocked, and he felt like God had, once again, intervened.

  They ate—Jackson not enough—and made love again and showered. They bantered and touched and fell asleep in front of the television while a rom-com played in the background.

  And the thought wouldn’t leave him that they weren’t done yet.

  God had given Jackson back to him—had given Jackson more lives than any normal cat could claim.

  That usually only happened when the big guy had work for you to do.

  Jackson and Ellery—they had more work to do.

  Accompanying Stories

  SOME OF the action previous to Red Fish, Dead Fish happened outside Fish Out of Water. Following are four stories that were posted on various blogs before I started writing Red Fish, Dead Fish.

  Two of these stories involve Ace and Sonny from Racing for the Sun, and the action from these stories is discussed in Red Fish, Dead Fish.

  No Day at the Beach

  JACKSON SHIFTED in the front seat of the car, willing himself not to take another pain med, although the last one had worn off hours ago.

  He was not going to be an addict.

  And he was done living off Ellery’s charity and the firm’s paid sick leave. Yeah, sure—they promised they’d hold his job for him as long as he needed it, but there were always cops retiring who thought PI’ing for a defense firm was a cushy way to beef up their social security.

  Jackson was there first, dammit.

  He shifted again and grunted, pulling out his binoculars to see if the prosecution’s star witness had emerged from the bar yet. Nope. This guy was getting good and plastered before he got behind the wheel.

  Jackson checked his phone to make sure it was charged up and ready to take pictures that would blow the witness out of the water. The phone started to ring, and he almost dropped it, straining his healing shoulder in an effort to get the phone back.

  “Goddammit!” he snarled, just as he pushed the button.

  “Nice to hear from you too. Why aren’t you home?”

  “Because home is still being repaired,” he said sulkily. He had another month before the AC unit came in, and the structural damage still had not been repaired. He was starting to suspect his tenant was bribing the construction crews to go slow in the hopes that he and Ellery stuck and Jackson wouldn’t need to move back in.

  The idea was tempting.

  Apparently Ellery thought so too.

  “Bullshit. Home is where your cat is throwing up on my loafers. Right now that’s here on American River, which is where I am, which is how I know you’re not. What are you doing?”

  A guy came out of the bar, and Jackson stiffened and then relaxed. Nope. Not his scumbag.

  “Waiting for the star witness of the prosecution for the Stanley case to drive intoxicated.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Ellery’s voice broke, which was adorable.

  “Well, you said he was usually unflappable.”

  “I know what I said.”

  “You said he was a perfect witness, and you wish you had something on him.”

  “I know what I said!”

  “You said that if only you could puncture this guy’s credibility, you could give poor Gilbert Stanley a chance to stay out of jail because just this once, he wasn’t doing anything wrong, and he really does take care of his saintly old mother in San Di—”

  “I know what I said!” Ellery roared. “I did not mean for you to go back on stakeout so soon after you got out of the hospital!”

  “Well, what did you expect me to do? Spend my days down at the river, cooking on the beach?”

  “You have three months of paid leave and the most luxurious you can possibly get is the river?”

  “Where do you expect me to go? San Diego? Those beaches are dangerous—haven’t you read the headlines?”

  Ellery’s long-suffering sigh indicated that yes, he had read the headline Jackson had sent him as a joke. “An Epic Lego Shipwreck Has Been Washing Thousands of Legos Onto Beaches,” he intoned dryly. “It’s hardly life-threatening, Jackson. It might even give you something to play with while you’re there.”

  “Don’t I get to play with you?” Jackson mock pouted. “You’re going to send me down to a bustling seaside town to get maimed by Legos, and I don’t even get to play with that thing you don’t want me to le-go?” He chuckled, because puns! They beat recrimination and guilt.

  Apparently Ellery wasn’t a fan. “If I take two weeks off and come with you, will you for fuck’s sake stop working and heal?”

  Jackson grunted and put the phone on speaker. This guy who couldn’t walk straight—this was his scumbag. “I am trying to help you wrap up your case,” he pouted. “Hold on a second.” Click. And there was the guy emerging from the bar. And click. There was the guy obviously staggering. And click, there he was on his knees, throwing up. Goddammit.

  “Ellery, here, I need to move the car and call the cops, okay?”

  “Dammit, Jackson, you’d better not wreck the fucking car!”

  Yeah, sure. Whatever. Jackson hit speed dial for his one friend left in highway patrol.

  “Davis?”

  “Rivers? What in the hell—this is my work line!”

  “I know. But I’m at a dive bar on F Street, taking pictures of a guy who’s about to get behind the wheel after throwing up in the gutter. I don’t want that on my conscience. Do you?”

  “Oh Jesus. No. Can you stop him?”

  “I’m on it,” Jackson muttered, easing his new Honda CR-V into traffic. The guy was parallel parked, so blocking him was easy. But it wasn’t going to make Jackson a whole lot of friends.

  He cruised forward and stopped next to the drunk guy’s vehicle, pulling just forward enough that for the guy to get out would mean using his passenger door. Then he put the car in Park, turned on his hazard lights, and pulled out his Sudoku so he could settle in for the wait.

  Then Emile Dellacorte staggered to his feet and hauled his puke-ridden carcass to the driver’s side of his old Mercedes, swearing at Jackson as he wobbled.

  “Get out of my way, asshole!”

  “Sorry! Car broke down! Won’t get out of Park!”

  Emile started swearing at him, and Jackson rolled his eyes and feigned deafness while rolling up the window.

  It was probably a dick move to antagonize a drunk guy—at least Jackson thought so in retrospect.

  That was not what he was thinking when Emile got into his car, revved his engine, and took off the brakes.<
br />
  GOD, THOSE highway patrol guys could talk.

  Two hours later, Jackson dragged his sorry ass into Ellery’s lovely, air-conditioned, comfortable home and limped to the couch. He collapsed there, wondering if he could convince Billy Bob, his cat, to go get him his pain meds, the rockin’ ones in the bathroom cabinet that he didn’t carry with him because they didn’t let him drive, and tried not to take anyway because reasons.

  “Jackson?” Ellery came out of the kitchen smelling like herbs and vegetables and some sort of chicken. He could cook. It shouldn’t have endeared him to Jackson, but it did. “Jackson, are you okay? Oh my God! Your face! Is that—did your airbag deploy?”

  “Sorry about my face,” Jackson mumbled, “And yes. Yes, the airbag did deploy. Davis had the Honda towed to the shop and dropped me off.” Davis, one of Jackson’s few friends from his academy days, had almost shit himself laughing too. Jackson Rivers? Here? Well, it was a mystery to Jackson as well.

  “Oh my God! Jackson! Did you even go to the doctor?” Ellery’s hands on his cheeks, checking his bruises and the bag burn on his forehead, felt absurdly wonderful. “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “No doctor,” Jackson said, stubborn. “Had enough of that noise for a long time.” He’d spent over a month healing from a gunshot wound. God, what a waste of time.

  “Fine—can I get you something?”

  “Pain meds?” he almost whimpered, hating himself. “Please?”

  “On one condition.” Ellery folded his arms, glaring, his dark brown eyes snapping and serious and his long jaw set just as stubbornly as Jackson’s.

  “Will it get me a giant ibuprofen?”

  “Sure. In fact, we’ll go for the Vicodin. I’m going to call Arizona and tell her that her witness is fucked, and she’s going to ask the judge for a continuance. It won’t do her any good, but it will give me two weeks between shit I absolutely must do.”

  “Oh God,” Jackson moaned, knowing where this was going.

  “I want to hear that some from you,” Ellery told him sweetly. “When you’re naked, in bed, and on the bottom. But right now—”

  “Oh God!”

  “Yes. All I want to hear from you is that you and me are going to fly down to San Diego, and you are going to spend a week on the beach while you recover!”

  “My cat—”

  “Can live with Jade. She’ll agree with me on this, Jackson. She thinks you’re overdoing it too.”

  “Oh God!” Couldn’t he even—

  “Jackson?” Ellery had drawn even with him and was staring at him from about six inches away.

  “Yes?” he gasped, his arousal stirring in spite of his pain.

  “We’re going to San Diego—”

  “Do you want me to maim myself on giant Legos?”

  “Sure. Knock yourself out. I also want you to fuck me blind. Several times. And then sleep in the sun to recover.”

  Jackson slow-blinked and tried to wipe the picture of a giant Lego guy supine in the sand right out of his catalog of mental images.

  He replaced it with Ellery, supine in bed, legs spread, pale, patrician features blotchy and flushed with lovemaking, Jackson’s come running from his mouth and backside, too stoned with sex to move.

  “Okay,” he said helplessly. “Fine. You want to take me to the beach, I don’t mind.”

  Ellery’s shark smile showed that Jackson had caved easy, but Jackson couldn’t hate himself for that. “That’s a good boyfriend. Let me go get you some drugs.”

  Abruptly Jackson’s aches fell back on his body with a vengeance, and he accepted the meds gratefully.

  Not even Vicodin could obliterate that image of Ellery in bed, though. It was totally worth going to the beach if he and Ellery could make that come true.

  Redirecting the Blast—A few words from Ace

  THERE’S THINGS you have to remember about living with a ticking time bomb.

  Thing the first—just ’cause you can’t hear it ticking doesn’t mean the mechanism ain’t a “go.”

  Thing the second—just ’cause the bomb will probably not go off when you’re in the room don’t mean you won’t get hurt.

  Thing the third—it’s possible to control the blast.

  Or so I hoped. ’Cause the kid holding the gun at Alba’s head was looking scared and shaky—and Sonny was looking like a dirty bomb.

  The day had started out okay. Since them doings in Bakersfield a year ago, Sonny and I been lying low. As soon as he got out of the hospital, we came back to our little gas station in Victoriana and continued doing what we’d been doing before—making a life. I still drove the souped-up Ford, but we only topped 150 out in the desert, Sonny by my side, as the purple shadows lowered. No more racing, like I promised him, and the money from my last… adventure… had kept us going until we made enough business to keep us in the black.

  It also provided enough money for a college fund for Alba, our part-time help. Since she’d stopped wearing tight titty blouses and a truckload of makeup, she’d decided she was gonna be a good girl. I was looking for words to tell her that someday, right time, right people, she could wear whatever she goddamned pleased, but for right now, “good girl” meant schooling, and Sonny and me were all for that. So was Jai, our giant gay Russian enforcer, who would have stayed with us for minimum wage but was now fiercely loyal since we paid him enough to drive to Vegas once in a while to get laid.

  Jai was very protective of Sonny and Alba. Once he figured out that I killed the guy who hurt Sonny, I had the feeling he would have blown me every day and polished my rim to boot, except that would have meant me cheating on Sonny, and, well, that left him in something of a quandary. Let’s just say Jai woulda done unspeakable things for the three of us and leave it at that.

  Well, I wished I coulda left it at that.

  Sonny and Jai were under a Ford F-150 in the auto bay, dicking around with a transmission that should have been shot, burned, and buried about ten years before, and I was going over the ordering with Alba.

  She squinted through the small service window at their feet sticking out under the truck and listened to their bickering. Sonny spoke redneck, and Jai spoke redneck with a thick Russian accent, and they were both talking about car parts using pet names developed over nearly a year and a half of working together.

  “That don’t sound like English,” Alba said after a moment or two of us just staring at them and listening.

  “They’re gonna ship one of those guys who invent space languages out here to figure out what the fuck that is,” I agreed. “Think they’ll give us money?”

  Alba rolled her eyes. “They don’t pay dumbshits for being stupid,” she said. “But I need my mommy not to come hear them. She’ll think that stuff I do at school, I’m doing it wrong.”

  At that moment a dying Kia Sportage came chugging into the lot, blowing black smoke and rattling loud enough to echo off the distant mountains. As Alba and I stared and Sonny and Jai shoved out from under the truck in the bay, a thin kid got out wearing a black hoodie, black track pants, and black tennis shoes in the 110-degree heat.

  I stared. The last time I’d worn an outfit like that, I’d killed a man.

  The kid was holding a hand to his side, and blood was dripping down to the white foam tread of his trainer, and I figured this kid was not that far off from that level of desperate.

  “Get down,” I said to Alba.

  “But—”

  “Just get down under the counter. I don’t want him seeing you!” Because she was a girl, and desperate men preyed on the weak. She wasn’t weak, but he didn’t know that.

  “I need someone out here!” the kid shouted. “Someone get out here and fix my fuckin’ car!”

  I shot a look behind me to the auto bay and shook my head at Jai and Sonny to let me take care of this. Sad, yes, but true—I really am their best bet in a crisis. My hands at my sides, palms out, my eyes level, movements steady, I took a few steps out of the cashier’s cubicle and then o
ut into the searing desert sun.

  “I see you,” I said calmly. “And I see your car. And you’re both banged up some. Honestly, I think some bandages and antiseptic, you got a better chance than the car.”

  The kid swallowed and looked behind him, like he was expecting retribution to be riding down his ass with cherry lights on top. “I… I can’t do hospitals,” he said, voice weepy. “And… and I gotta get this money to a friend….” His voice cracked. “She’s….” He reached behind him and pulled out the gun I’d just known had been tucked in the back of his pants. “It doesn’t matter, man. Just fix the goddamned car!”

  “Okay,” I said, hands still out. “But I’m going to have to drive it into the bay. Do you want to sit next to me while I do that or—”

  “Wait—who was that?”

  I didn’t look. “Who was what?”

  “That girl—yeah, you go ahead and drive the car into the bay. I’ll be right there with the gun pointed at that girl!”

  “There is no girl,” I said in my strongest voice, because maybe Alba would get the fuck back down and I could drive the car to San Diego and crash it into the police station, which was my plan.

  The shot went wide—as he’d meant it to—but still. The weapon discharged into the desert to my left, and it doesn’t matter how many times you hear them or how many times you fire them, a gun report should do something to a man, or he’s forgotten why he’s alive.

  “Move the fuckin’ car!” he yelled, and then, never turning his back to me with that gun, he edged himself alongside the cashier’s cubicle and into the door I’d just come out of. Alba was standing by that time, her hands up, mouthing “I’m sorry, Ace” at me like that was gonna help if she got her brains blown to kingdom come.

  I moved the car, making the assessment as it rattled into the bay. Blown gasket, blown pistons, hole in the radiator, transmission fluid a fuckin’ memory. This thing should not have been running.