Paternity Case

by Gregory Ashe

  Bing knew all of it. Bing had known for fifteen years, ever since he’d laid out a line of coke for Somers at that damn party, ever since he’d caught Somers red-handed. Jesus, wasn’t that a great way of putting it. Ever since he’d caught Somers pounding his meat to a picture of Emery Hazard: scrawny, skinny Emery Hazard in a black-and-white yearbook photo. Fucking black-and-white. You couldn’t even see the color of those eyes, and that was what had always gotten Somers going.

  But back then a picture had to be enough. A black-and-white picture he’d cut out of the yearbook and stuffed in his glovebox, a picture that he moved from glovebox to locker to the desk in his bedroom, rotating it like it was the President’s goddamn nuclear codes because no place was really safe, and Somers knew somebody would find it eventually. But back then, that’s all he’d had. That’s all he could risk. He couldn’t even risk seeing Hazard, not after that afternoon in the locker room when—

  —the desire in Hazard’s eyes hot enough to buckle asphalt—

  —Somers had come so close to throwing his whole life away. That’s how he’d seen it back then. Throwing his life away. And now, when he thought of—

  —Dusty and Frank—

  —what the last fifteen years could have been, Somers realized he hadn’t been close to throwing his life away. He’d been close to starting it. But instead, he’d put that part of himself on hold because it was easier to go with the flow, easier to do what everyone expected, easier to do what everyone wanted him to do.

  It had been Bing who caught him. Bing who had stood there, staring through the Camaro’s glass, his face almost comical with its shock. Somers still remembered the mixture of lingering arousal, so slow to respond to the threat before him, and shame. He had jammed the keys into the car and sped out of there, so coked up he was lucky he hadn’t driven off the bluffs. Bing hadn’t said anything. But he’d known. And just the fact that he’d known had been too much for Somers. The fact that anyone had known his—

  —perversion—

  —secret, it was almost enough to break him, to crack him like a glass tumbling from a high shelf. So he’d started lying. He’d lied and lied and lied until everything he touched was a lie.

  Somers took a breath, startled to find himself still frozen in front of Bing’s door, his breath wavering, drifting, vanishing like an exorcised spirit. He’d lied for all these years, and here he was, and the lies hadn’t gone away. They’d only gotten thicker.

  He knocked.

  The footsteps from inside the house were uneven and heavy, and the door flew open so hard that it cracked against the inside wall. Bing, his nose bloody and puffed, his jaw and ear swollen, stood crooked against the doorframe. One big hand clutched at his jaw. The other gripped the jamb, the knuckles white—not from fear of collapse, Somers realized, but in anger. In fury. Bing was a man on the edge, and Somers felt a dark vertigo inside himself. On the edge of what? And what had carried him to that edge? Those were the important questions.

  “What happened to you?”

  “Did he send you here?”

  “What are you talking about? You look like shit. What’s going on?”

  “Your partner happened.” Bing’s jaw barely moved beneath his hand. The words came out scrambled. “That’s what happened.” And without another word, Bing swung the door shut.

  Somers intercepted it with his foot, and as he scrambled into the house, Bing turned away and walked towards the living room.

  “Bing,” Somers called after him. The cold air from outside swept between Somers’s legs, drawing snow with it. Already water soaked the boards. Snowmelt. Lots of it. Somers felt a tightening in his gut without words to explain what it meant. “Bing,” he shouted again, following the older man into the living room. “What do you mean Hazard did this?”

  “What does it sound like I mean?” Bing had dropped onto the couch, his bruised and bloodied face gingerly suspended between the fingers of one hand, a tumbler with two shrunken ice cubes on the table in front of him. His other hand still clutched at his jaw. “My nose is broken. My jaw is broken. I’m going to have that son of a bitch in court. Police brutality. I tried to make things right with him. Somers, you know I tried. You heard me. But he’s insane.”

  “What happened?”

  For a moment, Bing didn’t answer. When he spoke, the words still sounded like they were coming through a grain mill. “He’s crazy. Insane. He’s out of his damn mind. He came here to pick a fight. You know that? He came here saying I did—saying I did horrible things. Things you can’t say to anybody. Sure as hell can’t say them to a father.”

  “Yeah?” Somers kept his voice even. This was Bing. This was Bing, and Bing knew everything, he knew that deepest, darkest secret, and part of Somers wanted to haul ass. But he didn’t. He had a job to do. But his voice still sounded like it was strapped into old ice skates. “What happened?”

  “I’m telling you what happened. Aren’t you listening? He said all that shit. He wanted me to take a swing at him.” Bing let out a dark, pained laugh, and then he groaned and his fingers tightened on his jaw. “That’s what happened, he wanted to do this.” He jabbed a finger at his broken face. “And he got what he wanted.”

  “So you took a swing at him.”

  “Not a chance. Dad’s a cop, Somers. I’m not stupid.” Shifting on the couch, Bing rubbed at his chest, massaging his ribs, and then his lower back. “Motherfucker hits like dynamite in a tin can, you know that?”

  “You gotta tell me what happened. Where’s Hazard now?”

  Bing grimaced and flipped the finger.

  “Where is he?”

  “Fuck should I know? Fuck do I care?”

  “You going to tell me what happened? Or do I take you to the station and we start making things official?”

  “Official? Official? The only thing official about this is going to be when your faggot partner gets that badge ripped out of his hands and goes to prison.” Bing grunted, an amused noise. “Big guy, but I bet he bends over and plays the bitch faster than anybody else.”

  Somers forced himself to straighten his fingers. He forced himself to take a breath. This was Bing, and Somers’s fear was so old, so deeply ingrained, that the thoughts were automatic. This was Bing. He knew the truth. So play it cool, that warning voice said. Don’t do anything to get him mad. Let it roll right off. Count to ten. One. Two. Three—

  “You know what really put his balls in a vise, though?” Bing’s face was turned down, studying the ice slivers in his tumbler, but there was no mistaking the note of glee in his voice. Playground glee. The sound of a grade-school bully giving a purple nurple. “Fucker didn’t know about you and that picture. Didn’t even know why you’d quit the team. I didn’t mean to tell him. I figured he knew, what with you two being so close now.” And the glee deepened. Not just a purple nurple. This was all of it: titty twister, pink belly, wet willy, rugburn, every playground junkie’s favorite games. And Somers’s couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, like everything had gone solid from the neck down. “You like it? You like having that ass in the same room at night? Just get up and tap it when you hit a dry spell? Kind of your wet dream, right?”

  The shock of finally hearing it, of finally hearing from Bing the words that Somers had feared for fifteen years, was so great, so terrible, that he was surprised he was still standing. The words had hit him physically. They had hit like a telephone pole cracking him across the shins. They should have knocked him up into the air. That’s how he felt: like hundred and sixty pounds of lead dropping fast.

  “I don’t know—” It was reflex. It wasn’t even language. Just fifteen years of denial acting automatically.

  “No, we’re past that. What that motherfucker did to me,” Bing jabbed another finger at his face, “we’re past that. You’re hot for him. You were hot for him back then. So hot you just about ripped your own dick off staring at that picture of him. And you’re hot for him now. I mean, I knew you an
d Cora were together. I knew about your kid. But I knew that wasn’t all of it. Not for you. When I came back, I wondered if I’d gotten it wrong, but then I saw you with him at the party. You’re like a dog.”

  Somers couldn’t find the words to reply.

  Bing spoke in the same even, observational tone: a friend pointing out the next turn on a road trip, that kind of voice. “Like a damn dog in heat. That’s what you’re like. Panting along after him, your little prick hard enough to thread a needle. He doesn’t give you the time of day, does he? I saw him at the party. He’s got that pretty little piece of ass. You? He doesn’t look twice at you. Oh Jesus. Your face. You think—oh Jesus Christ, you think he’s into you? I’ve heard of some tough cases, Somers, but you, you take the cake. You’re a piece of shit, remember? You made his life hell. And you think—what? This is some kind of fairy tale? That if you jerk out enough wads, somehow he’ll forget that you held him down while Mikey Grames put a knife into him? Jesus, Somers. Open your eyes. Have a little self-respect. The whole town sees you sniffing his ass; you’re embarrassing yourself. Embarrassing your folks. Embarrassing Cora, God bless her for sticking around this long.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” The words were stiff; that made sense, a distant, logical part of Somers’s brain rationalized: he’d gone to lead, solid lead, and he was surprised he could speak at all. He was just so heavy. Just so damn heavy. He didn’t feel anything now, but that’s how the worst wounds always were. When the pain caught up with him, Somers knew it was going to be bad. Worse than bad. Nuclear.

  “You know what he said?”

  “We’ve talked enough about Detective Hazard.” It was a miracle. Anything at this point was a miracle, and Somers pressed forward, relying on momentum more than anything else to keep going. “We’re going to talk about what happened between the two of you. And then we’re going to go down to the station and—”

  “You’re not listening. You never listened. Not when you were one of my players. Not now. I’d say cut left, you’d cut right. I’d say drop back, you’d rush ahead. I’d scream at you, scream my head off from the sidelines, and you’d run whatever damn play you thought was best.” Bing had gotten to his feet, now. He bumped the coffee table as he came around it, and the slivers of ice made tinny rattling noises in the tumbler. A finger stabbed into Somers’s chest, and Somers retreated a step. “You’re not listening now. I told you what happened.” The finger drilled into Somers’s chest again. “Your asshole partner.” Again, stabbing into taut muscle and driving Somers backward. “Showed up.” Again. “And broke.” Again. Somers was in the entry hall now. On his next step, snowmelt slicked his foot, and Somers barely caught himself from falling. “My.” This time, instead of a finger, Bing slapped his palm against Somers’s chest. “Fucking.” Again. “Face.”

  Somers slammed into the door, and he wrenched at the handle, fumbling the damn thing open. Winter met him, cold enough to bring tears to his eyes. Jesus, just let it be the cold, just let it be the cold that was stinging his eyes.

  “You know what he said?” Bing, framed by the doorway, smirked through a broken jaw at Somers. “After he did this, after he’d gotten it all out of his system by knocking me around, you know what he said? He said maybe he’d fuck you after all. Maybe he’d go in raw, just rip your chute open. He said he’d like to see you spitted on his cock and screaming. He said he hoped he’d make you bleed. That’s what he said. Make you bleed because you made him bleed.”

  Somers stopped. His brain stopped. The snow scuttling across the drive stopped. The world stopped.

  Emery Hazard would never, not in a million years, have said something like that.

  The realization was like the sun coming up—the summer sun coming up, hot and close and blazing—turning the snow to melt, the melt to steam, burning away winter in heartbeats. That’s what it was like. It was like someone had set a blowtorch to Somers’s belly.

  He turned to face Bing.

  “Ree wouldn’t say that.”

  Bing’s startled expression lasted only a moment, and then the smirk was back. “Ree? Is that what you call him? Is that what he wants you to—”

  “Ree wouldn’t say that. He wouldn’t have said any of that.”

  “You haven’t changed. You’re still living that fairy tale. Your whole life has been one long fairy tale. Parents made you think everything you did was right. Kids at school worshipped the ground you walked on. College, a job, it all just fell right into your lap. And you think that, what? Because you’re John-Henry Somerset, you can dip your wick wherever you want it and nobody will care? You think you’re special? You think things are different? If I breathe one word of this, if I even hint at it, people in this town will tear you apart. They’ll tear both of you apart. You want me to keep your secret? You want me to shut my mouth so that you and your faggot partner can bone each other? Get the fuck off my porch and get the fuck out of my life. That’s the only way I’m keeping my mouth shut, Somers, because if I see you again, if I so much as see you crossing the street, I’ll tell everybody I know about your itchy pecker and that picture of your buddy.”

  Somers surprised himself by laughing. He shook out his hands. He felt loose. In spite of the cold, he felt relaxed, limber, like he’d stretched out all the stiffness, all the kinks. Like he’d been packed in a box and now, just barely, now he could stand up. Yeah, something like that. Like he could breathe.

  “It’s the twenty-first fucking century, Bing. Nobody that matters gives a shit about any of that stuff anymore. If I love Ree, that’s my business.”

  “If I love Ree,” Bing repeated with a mocking simper. “You sound just like him, just like a perfect queen.”

  “Get out of the way.”

  “What?”

  “Get out of my way, Bing.”

  “Nice fucking chance. This is my home, and I’m not—”

  “You just admitted to an altercation with another police officer. That police officer isn’t answering his phone, so I think I’m pretty well justified in looking around your house. Now get out of my way unless you want me to cuff you.”

  Red mottled Bing’s face, visible even under the blood and bruises. One hand probed at his chest, massaging ribs, and then drifted to his lower back again. “You better not touch anything. Not one fucking thing, you hear me?”

  Somers pushed through the door.

  Bing brought around his hand, now holding a gun, and swung it towards Somers’s chest. Somers was ready for him. He caught Bing’s wrist and twisted. In half a moment, he had Bing’s arm wrenched around, and the gun clattered onto the floor.

  “And Bing,” Somers said as he slammed Bing into the wall and snapped cuffs around his wrists. “I could hear you just fine during those football games. You called the same plays every time. Predictable. You were then. You still are now.”

  A raw nerve inside Somers urged him to hurry. Hazard could be hurt. Hazard could be—

  —dead—

  —in need of medical assistance. With Bing cuffed, Somers took a step towards the living room. He had to find him. There wasn’t any time to lose. He had to—

  No. Somers forced the compulsion down. Better to do things right. Better to do things step by step, the way Hazard would do them. So he took Bing out to the Interceptor, locked him into the back, and called in the incident. Then he waited for backup.

  The black-and-white skidded into the driveway a few minutes later, spraying snow and slush across the yard. When the car screeched to a halt, Jonny Moraes—young, black, easy-going—darted out of the passenger seat. He didn’t look so easy-going as he trotted towards Somers. His partner, the big, red-headed Patrick Foley, followed a moment later.

  “You sure put a bee up Cravens’s ass,” Moraes said, hand on his sidearm as he glanced through the window at Bing. Bing, for his part, rested his face on tented fingers, ignoring the cop’s attention. “I bet the whole damn station will be here soon.” />
  “One of you stay here with him,” Somers said, jerking his head at the Interceptor. “I haven’t cleared the house. We might have an officer down.”

  “You think—”

  Please, no. That was what Somers was thinking, just those two words: please, no. But he managed to iron the worst of the fear out of his voice and said, “Nobody can get in touch with Ree. Shit. With Hazard.”

  Moraes pitched a sideways glance at Foley. Somers didn’t care. He didn’t have a damn to give about what they thought.

  “Go,” Foley said.

  “Don’t let anybody else near him,” Somers said.

  “I know what I’m doing, Somers.”

  “Don’t let Swinney and Lender take him.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about? What do you mean Swinney and Lender?”

  “Nobody. Not even Cravens.”

  Somers didn’t wait to see what Foley thought about that. He headed towards the house, and Moraes followed Somers to the door. They went into the house with weapons drawn, clearing it room by room, floor by floor.

  The main floor was empty. The second floor was abandoned. Somers returned to the kitchen, and this time, his eye caught the rust-colored smear along the basement door. Just a trace of it. Easy to miss from the wrong angle, in the wrong light. Dried blood. He nudged the door open.

  Pitch black down there. Knocking the lights on with the back of his hand, Somers took the stairs carefully. Where was Daisy? Was she hiding in the dark with one of Bing’s rifles? Was she watching Somers come down the steps, holding her breath, lining up the shot? Jesus, where was Hazard? And what was that smell?

  “Gasoline,” Moraes whispered, and he pointed to the next step. Gasoline still darkened the unpainted wood. “Gallons of it. Look.”

  Somers remembered the look in Daisy’s eyes as she had talked about their home in Chicago. She had told them that Hadley burned it down. She had told them that it was proof of Hadley’s oppositional defiant disorder. The truth, though, was clear in the spattered gasoline. Had Daisy lied to them, trying to cover up her daughter’s murder? Or had Daisy not known the truth? Had she never known?