He giddily said, “Yes, ma’am,” bowing graciously toward her and running out the room so fast he nearly slipped on the hardwood floor. She put his pencil in her purse. And his lighter.
Chapter Eight
Frank grabbed him halfway to the door, smiling evilly the way he did when he was up to something. “Going somewhere?”
“I need to get paint,” Casey said, proudly holding up Bella’s car keys.
“Really?”
He tried to wrench free to no avail. “Where’s Vincent?”
“Upstairs. Ordering a part. Does Bella know that you damaged my warp speed indicator?”
Casey broke into laughter, then cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his head, trying to regain his composure. It was one thing to lie, but did Vin really need to say something so fantastical that no one but Frank would fall for it? “Your what?”
“My indicator. For war…there’s no such thing, is there?”
“You’re asking the wrong guy. I don’t know anything about cars.”
“I gave him a credit card,” Frank said with an expression that would’ve been a pout on anyone else’s face. But Frank looked like he was going to cut the card, and Vincent, into little pieces. He took a deep breath with his eyes closed, then glanced back at Casey. “Alan’s here.”
Casey peeked through one of the three fleur-de-lis shaped accent windows on the front door at Alan Barker’s tiny Jaguar. It was parked suspiciously close to Bella’s much larger, and more ferociously feline looking Maserati.
Alan was a friend of Frank’s from way back. He’d been selling Casey’s artwork at his galleries for years, and although he was a lecherous old man, or partially because of it, Casey adored him. “Why didn’t you invite him in?”
“I did. He’s frightened of the dogs.”
“Because Vincent sics them on him.”
“I’d never do such a thing!” Vincent said defensively, sensing that he was the topic of discussion and coming to beautify the scene. Considering he was usually only mentioned when he was in trouble, it wasn’t his wisest of habits. “It’s not my fault I get sic and stay confused. I’m still learning French.”
Frank pulled him close. By the hair. Vincent smiled widely and Frank smirked, the two of them staring carnally at each other with no notice of their audience. Casey fled the house before he witnessed something that may embarrass at least two of the present company.
Alan waved to him from inside the car like a Miss Universe contestant. Casey hopped into the passenger seat, banging his head like he always did. The car was too little for him. It was an old silver Jag which, like everything Alan owned, had at least two true stories behind its origin.
This was either a gift from Princess Grace that was bestowed upon him the night before she died, or was won in a game of gin rummy from a Bosnian homosexual with the world’s largest penis. Neither story was factual, of course, and Casey would get a brand new one if he simply chose to ask.
“Darling!” Alan exclaimed, kissing him on the lips and then French-style on both cheeks. Alan’s appearance could be summed up with the color gray: monochromatic hair and clothes and even his eyes were the color of the sky over London ninety percent of the year. His personality, on the other hand, was like a flaming rainbow.
“I hope you haven’t been sitting out here for very long,” Casey said, realizing that he had no idea where the day had gone. This happened to him often, mostly when he was exercising creativity.
“Ages,” Alan said dramatically. Conversations with Alan Barker were always on par with theatrical productions and Casey played his part, exaggerating every word for effect.
“What brings you all the way out here?” he asked, as if Paris were half the world away.
“Observant as ever, my little peach,” Alan cooed, nodding toward the backseat. There was a stack of canvases, meaning that Alan’s spontaneous trek to the outskirts of Paris was not spontaneous after all. Frank must’ve called him.
Casey normally liked to stretch the canvases himself, but this would do in a pinch and he was desperate to get started. “You’re a lifesaver,” he said, giving him the best hug he could manage in such a cramped space. “Thank you.”
“Frank said you were feeling like your old self again. I hope this means you’ll paint me something I can sell.”
Casey wasn’t sure whether it was the French tax system or a British thing that made men as wealthy as Frank and Alan pretend to be short on cash. At least Frank had the excuse of being retired. “Oh, Alan,” he sighed, slathering on the saccharine sympathy. “You poor thing. Are you in a bad way?”
“Such attention is paid to starving artists, but never starving art dealers,” Alan said, taking his cue to ham it up and draping his arm over his forehead.
“And you look terribly thin.”
Alan giggled. “You are good to me, darling.” He handed him a folded paper bag filled with brushes and paint, all the beloved colors that Casey had left in America when he was sent to France, to be Frank’s problem for awhile after Casey had crashed his motorbike. His mother thought a change of scenery would do him some good. She was right, though Bella was hardly the scenery she must’ve had in mind.
He looked through the bag, thinking of what Bella had said about stealing. Art supplies had always been his one big gift of the year, something he knew that his mom spent the next several years paying off of her credit cards. Even then, they weren’t close to the quality he used now. The quality Alan picked up at the shop like it was nothing.
Casey would still spend hours at the craft store, contemplating the colors, the sheer beauty of it all overwhelming. He understood how artists lost their minds. There were so many of his favorite painters who had been reputed to eat their paint, consuming the tools of their trade. It wasn’t the best thing to eat, that was for sure. He preferred just to touch it, to have the oil and pigment on his skin, dried and caked like a shield on his fingers.
But there was something missing. Something important. “There’s no red.”
“Contraband,” Alan said with a grin as he pulled the tube from his inside coat pocket like a seasoned drug dealer. “Any reason Frank would specifically tell me not to bring you red?”
“No idea,” Casey said, content with the world.
“You be very careful with that one. It would be so much safer if you switched back to men.” Alan held up his hands to stop the protest Casey wouldn’t have bothered giving. “I know, I know, it can be a difficult transition.” He placed his hand on Casey’s leg. “But I can help you!”
“Thanks, Alan, I’ll think about it.” He hadn't technically switched, he just had no preference one way or the other. An eternal optimist, Casey tended to see it as the best of both worlds and believed gender to be irrelevant when it came to love or sex.
“She’s a succubus. You’ll need this.” He handed him what looked at first glance like a crucifix on a thin leather cord, but which upon further inspection was actually two cocks crossed at the middle.
Casey embarrassedly handed it back. If Frank saw that in his house, he’d die blushing. “You keep it.”
“That woman and Vincent are apparently friends. No surprise there.”
“Be nice. Why do you hate him so much, anyway?”
“He stole my boyfriend!”
“Come on, Alan. You know it never would’ve worked out between you. Frank hates England, and you sing 'God Save the Queen' in your sleep.”
“And yet I live in France.”
“Nobody ever said you weren’t complicated.”
“All right, I’ll tell you,” Alan said, as if he hadn’t been dying to bring it up. “When Frank first brought that child to visit me in my home, I spent hours slaving away in the kitchen, baking the perfect hors d’oeuvres—”
“You use an electric tea kettle, Alan Barker. Do you actually expect me to believe you know how to turn on your oven?”
“Well, I bought the perfect hors d’oeuvres, and wouldn’t you know it
he devoured every last thing I placed in front of him!”
“If you didn’t expect them to be eaten, why did you buy them?”
“Completely beside the point. And then, then, he asks to use the loo. Explains why he’s so thin…”
“Vincent is not bulimic. He was probably snooping.”
“Of course he was snooping! Not only that, but he stole life-saving medication from a senior citizen!”
“You did not just say that,” Casey exclaimed. Alan would claw eyes out before letting anyone call him old.
“Well, I may have embellished the truth a teeny bit for dramatic effect. My point is that he stole prescription drugs from my locked medicine cabinet.”
Snooping was right up Vincent’s alley, but he’d need to have a good reason to steal from a friend of Frank’s. “Are you referring to Viagra?”
“Of course I am!”
He laughed. That would be a good reason, all right. “You don’t think Frank needs Viagra?”
“No, I imagine the little demon child slipped it in his coffee. Poor Frank must’ve been humped raw. Lord, what I wouldn’t do to kiss that wound better.”
“It’s hardly reason to hate Vincent. You would’ve given him the pills if he asked for them. You get them free from the French health service. Probably the British health service, too.”
“One can never have enough, darling.”
“They do expire, you know.”
“Only if you let them.”
Casey shook his head. “You are positively shameless. How do you live with yourself?”
“It’s a struggle every day, believe me,” Alan said, and they both laughed.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come in? I’ll hold the dogs at bay.”
“No, it’s all right. I’m meeting someone.”
“Not Marcel,” Casey groaned. “Why don’t you leave him alone? He’s not even gay!”
“But he wants to be successful. And famous. Unlike you, he lacks the talent to get there without being exploited.”
“He isn’t that bad,” Casey said, trying as always to be kind. The truth was that Marcel’s metallic sculptures of dog shit were a step down from their subject matter. They weren’t even really sculptures, just piles he found on the streets of Paris and had bronzed. If anything, the dogs should get the credit. But he was very good looking, lips like pillows and skin the color of a new penny, with cerulean blue eyes and a deep, baritone voice that brought a rise of the vapors wherever he spoke. Alan only represented him at all because he wanted to sleep with him.
“No, he’s not bad at all,” Alan said lustfully. “I’m meeting him down the road. There’s this lovely secluded B&B only a short drive from here.”
Casey hadn’t noticed any hotels in the area. If Frank and Vincent started getting too antsy for privacy, he’d have to mention it. “Doesn’t Marcel realize that sleeping with you will never earn him respect from his peers?”
“They respect you.”
“We haven’t slept together,” he laughed.
“That’s not what I’ve heard…”
“I wonder who started that rumor…”
“You know me too well,” Alan said honestly. “Now run along and make me some money. Lord knows I won’t get it from Marcel.”
Casey got out of the car, hauling the canvases as carefully as space allowed. Alan made no move to help him, instead choosing to ogle him brazenly while he maneuvered the large rectangles out of a space that couldn’t fit a spare tire. Casey held them propped against his hip and waved Alan on, wishing that Bella would give him the kind of attention Alan liked to bestow. There was nothing like being objectified to make a boy feel pretty. Which reminded him: before he got to ask Bella to disrobe, he’d have to make a sacrifice to the gods of vanity and do another portrait of Vincent.
Chapter Nine
Frank stood with his back to the door, his eyes closed while he listened to the rhythmic, childlike humming which could signify tedium as well as imminent death. Bella could not sit still, and she could not sit quietly. If she were assigned a task that couldn’t keep pace with her static attention span, from cleaning her guns or waxing her legs, to a hit that took more than an hour of her time, she would require music to maintain focus. Frank forbade her from wearing headphones on a job, fearing that her inattentiveness would get her killed, and thus the humming began.
In his mind he hummed along, but even with an audience of only himself he was too shy to make a sound, and his accompaniment was in reality a silent one. He used the key and let himself into the bathroom without knocking. There was not a state of undress he hadn’t seen her in during their years of working together, although what she was doing in her state of undress was certainly a new one: applying vanilla scented lip gloss to her breasts.
“Just because it’s your house doesn’t mean I can’t have privacy,” she said, seated on the counter in only her black stockings and high heels.
He shut the door behind him. “That is exactly what it means, Bella. What in God’s name are you doing?”
She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “It’s supposed to make them plump. It works on lips, anyway.” She squeezed her breasts together, then released them and pouted. “Do they look bigger?”
Frank raised his eyebrows.
“My tits, I mean.”
“No.”
She shouted “Fuck!” and threw the tube. “Why didn’t I get them done?”
He cracked open the window and reminded her, “Silva wouldn’t let you.” The cold air was reflected immediately upon Bella’s skin, which made her breasts look even smaller, giving him the cruel satisfaction he was aiming for. But that was not his entire motive.
He towered over her as he leaned against the counter, and he took one of her cigarettes. It had been two years since he had a cigarette. He could have got them from Case, who at least smoked real cigarettes and not the taste-equivalent of rolled up fashion magazines, but he blamed himself for the kid smoking in the first place, and liked to pretend that Casey’s lungs were untainted.
Bella lit it for him, a smug smile on her face. Then she lit one for herself by pressing it against his, their lips coming close enough together to get him into trouble if his husband happened by and felt like being dramatic.
He inhaled deeply, releasing his breath in a blissfully toxic sigh. “I want your opinion on the list,” he said, placing the paper with five names between them. He had questioned Gideon, who was looking more and more innocent by the second, making Frank’s suspicion grow just as quickly. From the information he had gathered about the five suspects, no one on the list appeared to be capable of ordering the hit. It was useless. Gideon had to be lying.
She flicked her ashes on it. “Why are you asking me when you’ve already made up your mind?”
“I don’t like my conclusion.” Something felt wrong. More so than it ought to. If this had been Frank’s assignment, he would have declared it a set-up and put a bullet in his handler. Then again, Charlie had set him up on numerous occasions, testing him to the breaking point merely to see what he was capable of. It had taken Vincent getting involved before he ever lashed out. But Bella didn’t have such a history with her handlers. As far as Frank knew, she still changed them seasonally like her wardrobe.
“Did you ask your sweetie?”
“Vincent thinks we should kill all five of them. He’s bored.” Frank was also bored, but unlike Vincent, he had chosen retirement. And that decision, along with the reasons behind it, continued to put a strain on their relationship.
“You think your friend isn’t who he says he is,” she said knowingly.
Yes, that was part of the problem. The part Frank had not wanted to admit. He had taken Gideon at face value, accepted him as an ally and allowed his relationship with Maggie to blossom unheeded. It was Casey’s opinion which finalized it, his reputed excellence in judging character that showed Gideon as the type of man who would never be in this situation.
But Fran
k had seen a fatal flaw in Casey’s judgment from the very beginning, a flaw which allowed a killer to intrude on their lives. Frank never had been able to forgive Maggie for letting a man like him near her son. And if she would overlook someone dangerous despite his best intentions on Casey’s good word, what other monsters would she let slip in?
Frank always had difficulties relating to men. Witnessing the brutalization of his mother on numerous occasions, seeing what he was capable of himself as an adult, left him distrustful of the entire gender. It wasn’t out of fear; most of his life he had either been fully capable of taking care of himself, or too suicidal to bother. But the majority of adult men made him uncomfortable. Brought his guard up. And yet there was the aspect of attraction, adding confusion where clarification was already needed.
That was what made Vincent so perfect. His raison d’être. He was feminine to the point of being non-threatening, and masculine enough to prove Frank was homosexual after all. Not to mention obscenely beautiful.
Frank never would have been able to adjust to retirement without him. Hotel rooms, Laundromats, and 24-hour diners were all he knew. When he received an envelope, it contained cash. Now envelopes came in the mail, demanding payment. They had addresses. Phones with contracts. They went grocery shopping.
He stuck with what was familiar, the more traditionally feminine roles he learned from his mother, cooking and cleaning and mending the drapes, while Vincent took care of everything else. More than that. V took care of him. He kept him from succumbing to the insanity that was always within proximity.
Mere weeks following the purchase of their home, before they even fully unpacked, the kitchen faucet stopped working. Frank was in an outright panic. His mother had been killed by their landlord. She only called him to fix their sink. Now she was dead and Frank’s life had been forever altered. Frank had stared at that faucet, imagining it happening all over again, having some stranger come into their private fortress and harm Vincent just as they harmed his mother. He was ready to burn their new home to the ground rather than even consider calling a plumber.
Les Recidivists (Chance Assassin Book 2) Page 8
