Indirection, p.16
Indirection, page 16
part #1 of Borealis: Without a Compass Series
“That’s it?”
“I mean, they asked me a million questions, but it all came down to the same thing: I didn’t want to hurt Scotty, and even if I’d wanted to, I never had an opportunity. I don’t have a key to the storeroom, and I was with Yasmin the whole time we were inside it. I told them about the service door, the one that the staff use sometimes, and they didn’t seem to care. They just wanted to talk to me.”
North grunted and looked at Shaw.
“If you want us to help you,” Shaw said, “you need to be completely honest.”
“I am being honest! And I’m tired of people telling me that. I didn’t want to hurt Scotty, and even if I had, I couldn’t have done it.”
“Technically,” Shaw said, “you could have. The service door was unlocked at some point during the night after Yasmin bought the water and placed it in the storeroom. That means you had access to that room and to the bottled water.”
“But so did everyone else!”
Shaw nodded. “I know. You need to keep that in mind, though. If the police come back, you might want to have a lawyer. And you might not want to let them take anything else without a warrant.”
Clarence smoothed his thinning hair with a trembling hand. His face was ashen. “Oh my God. Oh my God.”
“What kind of interactions have you had with Scotty over the last year? Since last year’s Queer Expectations, I mean.”
“None.” He must have read Shaw’s disbelief in his expression because he added, “None, I swear to you. I unfriended him on social media, and now he doesn’t even pop up in my feed. Every once in a while I’ll see his books on the Amazon charts, but I don’t spend a lot of time looking at that stuff.”
“What about Bolingbroke?” North asked.
“It’s all up in the air. And Scotty’s not my editor there anyway.” He glanced around the room. “I want to go home. I’m going to go home. I can’t stay here.”
“I’m not sure that’s the best idea,” Shaw said. “How do you think that’s going to look?”
“I don’t care how it looks! I didn’t do anything. Someone drugged me too, and I’m scared. I want to go home.” His gaze settled on a roller bag in the corner. Then he looked at North. “I want you to go. I’m going to pack my bags, and I’m getting the first flight out of here.”
“That’s really not a good idea,” North said.
“I want you to go. Please leave.”
North stood slowly. Shaw shared a look with him.
“Get out of my room!” Clarence shouted.
“We’re going,” Shaw said, “but if you want to do yourself a favor, you’ll start thinking about two things: first, a timeline that accounts for where you were, every minute of the day, after Yasmin bought that water; and second, somebody who might have wanted to hurt Scotty even more than you do.”
“I don’t—I didn’t want that. Scotty’s a jerk, but that’s not worth going to prison over.”
“You can give us that information,” North said. “Or not. But one way or another, you’ll want to be ready the next time the police talk to you.”
Clarence didn’t seem to hear him; he slid two fingers under the mustardy shirt’s collar, wheezing.
Shaw met North’s eyes again, and when North nodded, he headed to the door.
Behind them, Clarence’s voice was a croak. “The staff.”
“What?” Shaw said.
“The staff. The hotel staff. Scotty was horrible to them. Shouting. Demanding. Humiliating. He tried to get one of them fired—we all just sat there and watched like a bunch of cowards.” Clarence’s voice got stronger, and he said, “It was the service door that was unlocked. The door the staff uses. That means something, doesn’t it?”
“Keep thinking about that timeline,” Shaw said, and he led North out of the room.
Chapter 20
ON THE ELEVATOR RIDE down, North said, “I don’t like that he’s so quick to run.”
“He’s freaking out,” Shaw said. “It’s a natural response, even if he didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Scotty.”
“It’s also a natural response if he did.”
“There’s that too.”
North tried not to. Then it burst out: “My musk?”
“You have a very appealing fragrance.”
“Stop talking.”
“Not your foot funk.”
North stared straight ahead.
“But the American Crew gel. And the Irish Spring soap. And the leather.”
“I said stop talking.”
He couldn’t be sure—the car’s steel-sheet walls gave back a dull, wavery reflection—but he thought Shaw was smiling.
“Ow! My hip!”
“Oops,” North muttered as the doors slid open. “My fist must have slipped.”
They headed to the front desk, asked for a manager, and waited. It took a long time before a woman showed up. She looked Latina, her glossy black hair in a complicated braid, and she was wearing heels that put her eye to eye with North. Her name tag said Silvia.
“I’m sorry, sir. That’s not in keeping with hotel policy,” seemed to be the only functional line in her coding.
“Fine,” North kept saying. And then he’d offer an alternative or a compromise.
“I’m sorry, sir. That’s not in keeping with hotel policy.”
Shaw finally dragged him away.
“I was being polite,” North said as he ripped his arm free.
“I noticed. You were being polite at about a hundred and twenty decibels.”
North’s face heated.
“She was just doing her job,” Shaw said. “Come on, there’s got to be another way to talk to the staff.”
“Sure,” North said. “We just wander the service areas and start yammering at them.”
Shaw turned and looked at him, and North’s face got even hotter.
“Oh,” North said. “That’s what we’re going to do?”
“I honestly don’t know how you do this job without me sometimes.”
It wasn’t exactly that easy. Most of the housekeeping staff was gone for the day, and the one woman North did see pushing a cart became suddenly and extremely interested in going the other direction. A loose caster squeaked wildly as she flew down the corridor.
“Maybe don’t walk faster and faster shouting, ‘Hey, hey, yes, you,’ at a woman who doesn’t know you.” Shaw seemed to consider this and added, “Especially in a deserted hallway.”
“Well, you and Clarence fucked up my rhythm. Everything feels off.”
“Shake it off; we’ve got a job to do. Let’s split up. Maybe you’ll do better without an audience.”
North’s face was hot again, but he made himself fix Shaw with a glare.
“See?” Shaw said, smiling. “You’re already looking more like yourself.”
The first lucky hit was two guys, one black and one white, smoking and talking quietly at the back of the loading dock. The rollup door was open, and they huddled in the opening, blowing streamers of smoke out into the early-evening gloom. The cold was intense; North’s breath plumed in front of him as he walked toward them.
“Can I help you?” the black guy asked. He was wearing black Dickies, a black tee, and a hairnet.
“Any chance I can bum one of those? Rough fucking day.”
The black guy looked at the white guy, who was wearing a black polyester jacket and trousers that reminded North of the staff at the front desk. The white guy shrugged, opened a pack of Camels, and held it out. North took one, accepted a light, and puffed a few times. When the wind howled down the alley, the freezing air made his eyes water; he barely felt it.
“Thank the good fucking Lord,” North muttered through wreaths of smoke. “I was about to murder someone.”
The two guys eyed each other.
“My boyfriend,” North said to the unspoken question.
“You’re here for that convention?”
“Kind of. Private investigators.”
“That’s tough,” the black guy said. “Like Luther. That guy is the shit.”
“Luther was a police detective,” the white guy said.
“Shut the fuck up, Maurice.”
The white boy, who was apparently called Maurice, just grinned. “I never heard of any gay detectives before.”
“We exist,” North said and then drew hard on the Camel. Exhaling, he added, “Apparently.”
For some reason, that made the black guy laugh incredibly hard until Maurice said, “Ignore Deshawn. He’s dumb as shit.”
“Motherfucker,” Deshawn said before bursting out laughing again.
A few more quiet moments passed, and North savored the silence and the smoke.
“You don’t seem real faggy,” Maurice said.
“You are one ignorant son of a bitch,” Deshawn said.
“He doesn’t! I’m just saying, that’s all.”
“You’re making yourself look like a fucking fool. That’s what you’re doing.”
North just smoked. Down the alley, at the perimeter of the cone cast by the security light overhead, a homeless man was relieving himself against the side of a dumpster. The tinkling sound was musical in the winter night’s frozen clarity.
“So what are you guys doing here?” Maurice said.
“They’re here about that shit with the police. Don’t be so fucking stupid.” Deshawn looked at North, his mouth twisted with indecision, and he ashed his cigarette. “You are, aren’t you?”
North nodded.
“That writer guy? Fuck. What the fuck are you going to do about some guy having a seizure?”
North took a drag and eyed the men. He calculated the risk, and then he said, “Somebody put something in his water.”
“Oh fuck,” Deshawn said, “no fucking way.”
“Shit,” Maurice said through a puff of smoke. “That’s messed up.”
A minute limped past. Then another.
“So you and your boyfriend are, what?” Maurice said. “Trying to figure out who did it?”
“More or less.”
“How’s it going?”
“It’s going so well I’m bumming smokes on the loading dock.”
Deshawn barely seemed to hear him. He nodded the words away even as he was already speaking. “Nacho sucked that guy’s cock in the service elevator.”
“Bullshit,” Maurice said.
“He did. You know Nacho is a—” Deshawn glanced at North. “You know he’s into dudes. He bragged about it for a whole shift, like he ought to get a medal or something.”
“Who’s Nacho?”
“Nacho didn’t suck no cocks,” Maurice said, dropping the butt. He ground it out, checking himself for ash, and added, “Nacho’s full of shit.”
“I’m just telling you what he said.”
“Who is he?”
“He works in the kitchen with me. Mostly he does dishes, but sometimes he does room service.”
“And he’s full of shit,” Maurice said. “I’ve got to get back. Good luck catching a murderer or whatever.”
“He’s not dead,” North said. “Just doing really bad.”
“Yeah, ok. Fucker screamed his head off because he didn’t like the soap in his room. What do I care how he’s doing?”
Without waiting for an answer, Maurice trudged back into the hotel. The wind picked up, blowing hard enough to carry a crumpled Natty Light can along the broken asphalt, the aluminum singing out.
“You want to meet Nacho?” Deshawn said, flicking his butt out into the street.
North nodded, drew hard, and killed the Camel against the concrete wall. He pocketed the remaining half and nodded again.
After lowering the rolling door, Deshawn led him across the dimly lit dock and through the warehouse.
“Anybody else talking about this guy?” North asked as they went. “Scotty Carlson is his name, although I bet most people just call him asshole.”
“Just stuff like Maurice said. You know, throwing fits because things aren’t the way he likes them. And Nacho, I guess.” Deshawn threw a look, taking in the empty warehouse, and lowered his voice. “Look, man, my buddy and I used to do each other in high school. Just, you know. I’m cool with it or whatever.”
“Cool,” North said.
Deshawn straightened his shoulders, nodded as though something very significant and masculine had passed between them, and took the lead again.
God save me, North thought, from bi-curious men.
When they got to the kitchen, North said, “And what new fuckery is this?”
Shaw was sitting on the edge of a stainless-steel countertop, drumming his heels against the cabinet underneath, which made shivering booms as his heels tapped it. Next to him, leaning on one elbow, was a very good-looking man: he had dark hair, dark eyes, a strong jaw, and a tattoo of a rose on one bicep. The black t-shirt he was wearing strained to cover his well-developed arms and shoulders. In one hand, he held a spoon, and he was using it to toy with the whipped cream on top of a banana split.
“Oy, papi,” he was saying to Shaw, “te voy a dar mi banana, ¿sí?”
Neither man seemed to have noticed North, and Shaw bobbed and ducked, avoiding the spoonful of whipped cream that the man was trying to force into his mouth.
“That’s really nice of you,” Shaw kept saying, “but I know how a spoon works, and I’d really rather do it myself.”
“Me vas a chupar la polla,” the man, presumably Nacho, was telling Shaw as he smeared whipped cream along Shaw’s lower lip. “Y te va a encantar.”
“No, dairy really isn’t good for you, and my stomach is particularly sensitive—oh no, in our country we don’t put our hands there. Not on people we don’t know, anyway. For example, I could put my hand there on North because we’re dating, unless he’s trying to watch TV, like one time he told me he didn’t need a hand job during the Game of Games. Oh, North! There you are.”
“Here I am,” North said.
“Chavo, te voy a dar un beso negro, ¿no? Te voy a hacer gritar mi nombre.”
“I just met Ignacio, and I think he’s new to the United States because we’ve been teaching each other about our different cultures.” Shaw frowned. “It’s not working that well. He keeps trying to demonstrate how a spoon works.”
“And he’s trying to give you a fiver through your Lululemon pants.”
“And he’s trying to give me a—” Horror flooded Shaw’s face. “No, that’s not—”
“I see that’s a theme with you today.”
“No, I didn’t—I wouldn’t—Latin cultures are often very physically affectionate—”
Nacho seemed to take this as an invitation to shove a spoonful of the banana split into Shaw’s mouth and run his hand up the inside of Shaw’s thigh.
“Touch my boyfriend again,” North said, “and I’ll use that spoon to scrape out the lining of your rectum and feed it to you. ¿Me entiendes?”
“Dude,” Nacho said, dropping the spoon and backing up, hands patting the air. “We’re cool. I didn’t know he had a boyfriend. I just thought he was some dumb twink I could pound it out with.”
“Ok,” Deshawn said, “you’ve met Nacho. Nacho, these guys are private detectives. Investigators. Something like that. They want to talk to you about that guy you blew in the elevator the other day.”
“Oh shit.”
“And you guys need to do it somewhere else,” Deshawn said, glancing around the kitchen. “As soon as Marisa comes back from her smoke break, we’ve got to get back to work.”
Nacho was staring at a door on the far side of the kitchen.
“Go ahead,” North said. “Try.”
Nacho made a noise that sounded suspiciously close to a whimper. He undermined a lot of his stud credentials by tugging on the hem of his tee as he looked around for help. “This way,” he finally said, shoulders slumping as he led them out of the kitchen. The hallway was empty, and Nacho picked a spot twenty feet from the kitchen door. He glanced at Shaw. “Dude, you couldn’t have told me you had a boyfriend?”
“You were only speaking Spanish. I don’t speak perfect Spanish—”
“You don’t speak any Spanish,” North said. “You failed Spanish 1.”
“I dropped out of Spanish 1—”
“With a failing grade.”
“—which is different. But I picked up a lot on my own.”
“Right,” North said. “So you got that part about him eating you out?”
“Well, I didn’t—I mean, my education wasn’t comprehensive—certain parts had to be omitted because of curricular requirements—”
“Be quiet now.”
“Yes,” Shaw whispered, “thank God.”
“Well?”
“Look, man,” Nacho said, “I had no idea he was—”
“Jesus Christ, not that. Scotty Carlson.”
“Oh. Yeah. That.”
North stood a little straighter. He folded his arms.
Nacho looked at his shoes, rubbing the back of his neck.
“You didn’t blow him,” North finally said.
“Look, he’s cute, he’s a big deal, he’s been an asshole to everybody. I thought it’d be cool if I told everybody that. Besides, I’ve got a reputation to maintain. I’m the hot, slutty chacal. I’ve got to keep that up.”
“What a fucking waste of time,” North said to Shaw.
“Yeah,” Nacho said, “I mean, all I did was sell him some weed and then smoke it with him.”
North’s attention slid back to Nacho.
“Um, I mean, I don’t smoke weed because it’s illegal and—”
“Tell me exactly what happened.”
“Ok.” Nacho rubbed the back of his neck some more. He seemed really interested in the black Reeboks he was wearing. “So, he asked me if I had any weed—”
“Back up. From the very beginning.”
“Like, when I was born?”
North waited.
“Um, sorry, bad joke. Ok, so, I was upstairs, collecting room-service trays.”
“When?”
“Tuesday night.”
