Indirection, p.22
Indirection, page 22
part #1 of Borealis: Without a Compass Series
“—and if you had said ‘empowering’ one more time,” JD said, “I would have puked on your face.”
“Scram,” North said when they reached the table.
The man stared up at him from under his combover. “But I paid fifty dollars—”
“Do what all these hacks do: put eight more cocks in it, a shower gang bang scene, and some sort of ball depilation fetish. Now get lost.”
“Actually,” Shaw said, reading over the man’s shoulder, “I think he’s writing a picture book.”
North flushed.
“Maybe only six more cocks,” Shaw said helpfully.
“Do not,” North growled at him. To the man, he said, “What don’t you understand about scram? JD is going to refund your money; she doesn’t have time to talk right now.”
“I don’t do refunds,” JD said, “and whatever you think—”
“I paid for this time,” the man insisted.
“You want a critique?” North said. “I’ll give you a critique. You get fifteen minutes over Facetime. It’s a courtesy critique because I need to talk to her.”
“I don’t have Facetime,” the man said hesitantly. “But my mom has Google Hangouts.”
“Fine. Whatever. Go.”
“I don’t do refunds,” JD said, the pitch rising.
“And first free piece of advice,” North said, gesturing at the pile of papers, “get rid of that cover with the teddy bear humping the spaceship.”
“My mom drew that!”
“Maybe you should frame it,” Shaw suggested. “And then you can tell her how mean the cover design artists are, and they wouldn’t let you use it, and it’ll give you something to commiserate about.”
Standing, the man gathered the pages. “How will I contact—”
“Go!” North roared.
The man scurried away, and conversation buzzed to life when he reached the line. Shaw was fairly sure he heard the man say something like, “That’s the most helpful critique I’ve ever gotten.”
Dropping into a chair, Shaw met JD’s eyes. North sat next to him.
“I’m not sitting here for my health,” JD snapped. “Fifty dollars gets you fifteen minutes. You pay in advance.”
“When did you realize Scotty Carlson had stolen your manuscript?”
JD’s hands curled around the tablet. She seemed to be holding her breath. Then she smiled. “God, how’d you hear that?”
“We’ve seen the manuscripts.”
“Did Josue let you look? He must not have blabbed about the whole thing, though. He idolizes Scotty. I don’t know why; Scotty treated him like a jerkoff toy.” Her lips parted to expose faintly yellow teeth. “I guess that’s what they call real love.”
“When did you realize what had happened, JD?” Shaw asked.
She laughed. “Is this the motive? You two really are something. Did you come down here to confront me and get my alibi? Jesus. I killed Scotty because he stole my book?”
“You still haven’t answered the question,” North said.
“That’s because you’re asking the wrong question. I never ‘realized Scotty stole my manuscript.’ I sold it to him.”
Shaw threw a sideways glance at North. “Why?”
“Because he was done. Finished. He’d barely eked out the last Lars book, and he didn’t have anything left to write. Inspiration all dried up, although you wouldn’t know it from how he and Josue carry on about their all-night sex marathons.”
“I thought he had some other books after the Build-Your-Own-Bear books,” North said, glancing at Shaw for confirmation. Shaw nodded. “What about those?”
“Bought,” JD said. “He bought all of them, I think. I mean, I don’t know that for sure, but after he approached me, I went back and looked at his work. You can see the difference almost immediately, once you know what to look for.”
North was silent for a moment. “He approached you?”
“That’s right. I had to sign a non-disclosure agreement just to hear the offer, which makes sense in hindsight. I mean, Scotty had an image to maintain: the perfect gay, the perfect lover, the perfect physical specimen, the perfect writer. I was curious, so I signed, and he told me what he wanted: another book in the Lars series, written by me, delivered in six weeks.”
“And?” Shaw said.
“And I said yes.” JD shrugged. “I already had a draft of Clubbing sitting on my hard drive. I did a find-and-replace for the names and a few of the descriptions, and I sent it off. Scotty liked it. He paid me. The end.”
“He didn’t contact you about the manuscript again after that?”
“Not until I got an email telling me that he no longer wanted to use the manuscript. I’ve got to tell you, I just about shit myself. I thought he was going to ask for the money back, and I’d already spent the fifty thousand.”
“He paid you fifty thousand dollars to write a book?”
Another shrug. “He’d make it back. The Lars series is extremely popular, and on top of that, he had just taken that editor job at Bolingbroke. I guess he was worried about keeping his credentials current, and he wanted to put out another book to prove he could still write.”
“And?”
JD stared blankly.
“The money?” Shaw said.
“Oh. He didn’t even bring it up. He said he wasn’t going to use the manuscript, and nobody else had seen it, so I was free to publish it myself provided I changed the names of characters. That was easy; I still had the original sitting there. I got a cover, put it up, and the rest is history.”
“And this conversation had nothing to do with why you followed him into the restroom a few nights ago?”
For a moment, JD was very still. “I already told you about that.”
“You sure did. And there’s nothing you want to add?”
“Not a thing. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got people who paid for my time.”
“I don’t suppose you can tell us where you were Wednesday night?”
“I was at dinner with some readers. I do a raffle for all my meals and coffees so readers can win a chance to spend time with me.”
“So they can pay to spend time with you.”
“They want to do it,” she said, lip curling. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“I understand,” North said. “Where were you after dinner?”
“In my room. Alone. Now will you please leave? You’ve already put me behind schedule.”
North and Shaw shared a look, and they stood.
“Not that it’s any of your business,” JD said, her tone suggesting an afterthought. “But I did see something Wednesday night. I treated myself to some cake and ice cream, and I was putting the tray in the hall when I saw Karen sneaking out of her room.”
“Sneaking?” Shaw said. “Are you sure she wasn’t creeping?”
“Or lurking?”
“Or slinking?”
“Or pussyfooting?”
“Pussyfooting doesn’t count,” Shaw said. “Try again.”
“Excuse me,” JD said. “What the hell is going on?”
“Pussyfooting sure as fuck counts,” North said. “It’s like a cat burglar. Pussyfooting.”
“That’s not what that means at all. It means, you know, walking around a subject instead of talking about it.”
“It can mean walking softly and quietly too. Like a cat. Or a cat burglar.”
“I’m going to check.”
“You don’t need to check,” North said, pushing Shaw’s phone down. “I just told you, so you don’t need to check.”
“It’s not that I don’t trust you—”
“Excuse me,” JD was screeching, “excuse me!”
“—but I just want to check.”
“And I told you,” North pushed the phone down again, “you don’t need to check. I’m the one who graduated college. Me.”
“Right, but, see, I remember, you kind of had a limited vocabulary when you started college. You were doing all those remedial worksheets. They’d have pictures of musical instruments, and you’d be trying desperately to figure out the name. Or pictures of fruit. Or days of the week. I mean, I’m really amazed that you stuck with it and tried so hard. It was really impressive. And I’m sure you know what a tromboner is now. But, you know—”
“I was learning Spanish, you fucking imbecile. And it’s a trombone. Not a tromboner. Not that you would know, because you didn’t graduate college.”
“I didn’t need to graduate college to know what a boner is. You had a whomper cock rocket that time I walked in on you watching those home gym commercials—”
“Excuse me!” JD shrieked.
“What?” North rounded on her. “Jesus Christ, can’t you see we’re in the middle of something?”
“You’re really being kind of rude,” Shaw told her. “Just a little.”
“She was wearing a trench coat. And a hat. And she kept checking the hallway to make sure nobody saw her. She was sneaking. That’s who you should be talking to.”
“Who?” Shaw asked North.
“Christ, I don’t know. She’s been blathering on for what feels like hours.”
“Karen! Karen! Karen, you dumb fucks! Now get the fuck out of here!”
As North and Shaw made their way out of the Kayak’s, North gave the wide-eyed people in line a double thumbs up. “Best critique I’ve ever gotten,” he whispered.
In the hall, Shaw slid his arm through North’s. “Feel better?”
“God,” North said, ruffling Shaw’s poof of chestnut-colored hair before kissing his temple. “You have no idea.”
Chapter 26
SHAW AND NORTH MADE a loop of the hotel’s public areas in search of Karen. The playfulness and wild excitement of the previous day had evaporated; people moved quietly in small knots, and judging by the empty halls and sparse audiences Shaw saw in the convention rooms, he guessed that at least half of the convention attendees had gone home. One young woman, who looked barely out of her teens, stood forlornly at the intersection of two hallways. In her hand, she held a drooping silicone cock.
When Shaw made a noise, North looked over at him. “I feel bad for them,” Shaw said. “They look forward to this all year, and now it’s been ruined.”
“Yeah, murder is a real boner-killer.”
“A lot of them are probably grieving. Or dealing with the trauma of a near-death experience. Or in shock. I should see if Dr. Farr could set up some emergency sessions for people here. I bet she could really help them start processing their loss.”
North looked at him again.
“Sorry.” Shaw flushed. “I know how silly that sounded.”
“No. Well, maybe a little. But I love that you care about people like that.”
“Oh.”
“God, you’re beautiful.” North leaned over to whisper, “Keep smiling like that, and you’re going to give me a tromboner.”
Shaw didn’t know what the right answer was to that, so he settled for squeezing North’s ass, which made North laugh so hard he had to sit down.
“I don’t know what’s so funny,” Shaw said, hands on hips, aware that the harem pants weren’t exactly doing him any favors.
North just laughed harder.
When he’d recovered, Shaw ignored his request for a hand up—slapping at North’s fingers when North tried to grab him—and they started to make another loop.
This time, they found Karen in the Royal Excalibur’s lobby. Jadon and Cerise were there too, the three of them forming a tight triangle. Karen looked wrecked from the night before: dark circles under her eyes, a sallow cast to her skin, her hair greasy in the mess of a bun she had attempted. Her nose was still huge and puffy from the fall, and Shaw guessed that it was broken. Jadon was in a fresh suit and shirt, but he had the look of raw exhaustion that Shaw remembered from when they’d been dating and cases had taken over Jadon’s life for days at a time. Even so, he still managed to look fantastic—somehow, the fabric gave the illusion of being soaking wet, hugging every inch of defined muscle. Cerise looked thinner than ever in her too-big magician’s suit, but her sharp eyes never stopped moving.
Whatever Jadon and Cerise were selling, Karen wasn’t buying. She shook her head and stalked away, and when Jadon started after her, Cerise laid a restraining hand on his arm. She said something, and Jadon’s gaze shot toward North and Shaw.
“Don’t engage,” North muttered, nudging Shaw with one shoulder so that they turned to follow Karen. “You’re going to make him soup and give him a sponge bath and the next thing I know, you’ll be married to him and having his babies.”
Shaw allowed himself a few seconds to process that as they cut across the lobby’s thick red carpet. “I’m sorry,” he finally managed. “What?”
“You heard me. The last thing I need is you feeling sorry for Jadon Reck and trying to take care of him.”
“But that part about the babies…”
With a wild noise, North caught Shaw’s shoulder and forced him into a trot. “You heard me,” he bit out.
They caught up to Karen in one of the hotel’s main hallways, halfway to The Round Table. She was crying, her head down, and power walking.
When North squeezed Shaw’s shoulder, Shaw hurried to catch up. “Karen? Hey, it’s Shaw. Karen, hold on.”
She stopped, covered her eyes, and her whole body shook with another suppressed sob. “I’m sorry. Now’s not a good time—”
“Karen, what’s wrong?”
That opened the floodgates, and sobs poured out. She cried so hard that she was trembling, and Shaw helped her to a bench. The flow of traffic was thin today, and although people slowed to stare, nobody made any move to approach them. Some of that might have had something to do with North, who was standing in front of Shaw and Karen, arms crossed, glaring.
“Take a fucking picture,” he told an old man in a rainbow ball cap. “Next hour, we’ll have the Elephant Man.”
The poor guy ran away so fast that he hit the railing outside The Round Table and almost flipped over it.
After a couple of minutes, Karen’s crying slowed, and she wiped her face. “Oh God, that makes my nose hurt ten times worse. I’m all congested, and just touching it is so awful.”
“Hot shower,” North said over his shoulder.
“Huh?”
“He knows what he’s talking about,” Shaw said. “Probably. I mean, he worked construction, and he grew up in a middle-class neighborhood, and it’s very important that you understand how butch he is, you know, with the boots and all—”
North was making one of those wild noises again, but he didn’t look back at them.
“—so he probably knows what he’s talking about.”
Karen sniffled, winced, and managed to say, “Ok. Yeah.”
“Want to tell us what that was about?”
Shaking her head, Karen got to her feet. She took a step away from the bench, casting North a nervous glance, but he only shrugged and moved out of her way. She took another step.
“Whatever they think they have on you,” Shaw said, “they don’t have it yet. Otherwise they wouldn’t have let you walk away. But they’re going to come back. And they’ll keep coming back.”
“I’m not—” Karen tried.
“Even if you didn’t have anything to do with Scotty, you’ve got something that you want to keep a secret. I’m telling you—”
“You’re just like them,” she said. Her too-wide mouth hardened. Her lips were white where she clamped them together. “You’re telling me as a friend, is that it? And if I just tell you what’s wrong, you can make everything better? Did I pretty much get it?”
“I’d like to be your friend,” Shaw said softly. “I’d like to help you.”
Tears flooded Karen’s eyes again; she dashed them away. “I’m sorry. You seem very sweet, but I’m exhausted, and I’m in pain, and I can’t stop thinking about how horrible yesterday was and what happened to Scotty—” She cut off with a sob, mastered herself, and then managed to say, “But I don’t know you. Not really. And I’m tired of everyone here thinking I’m stupid just because I don’t sell as many books as they do. Do you know how tiresome it is to have these self-important, self-absorbed people telling you all day what you’re doing wrong, and if you’d just do things the way they do, you’d be a bestseller? Only, the reality is, they’ve just been lucky, and there’s nothing you can do about that.”
“Does this have something to do with the book Scotty was supposed to help you with?” North asked.
Karen started to shake her head and then caught herself. “Please don’t follow me; I don’t want to have to ask hotel security to make you leave me alone.”
“Karen, you’re only making things worse,” Shaw said.
“Funny. Detective Cao said the same thing. But you know what? Things can’t be any worse. Scotty’s dead. Things don’t get any worse than that.”
Standing, Shaw shook his head. He moved to stand next to North. “I’m sorry we upset you.”
“You didn’t upset me,” she said, but she gave the words the lie by wiping her eyes again. “You know who you should talk to, if you’re so keen on figuring this out? You should talk to Mary Angela. Sweet, dumpy-frumpy Mary Angela. I heard her tell Scotty right to his face she was going to end him. Those were her words: end him. And somebody did, didn’t they? Why don’t you think about that?”
She whirled and hurried in the other direction, but halfway down the hall, stumbled over some irregularity in the carpeting and went down on hands and knees.
When Shaw took a step forward, North caught his arm. “Better if you don’t.”
Karen was crying openly now as she got to her feet. She massaged her knee for a moment before hobbling away.
Sighing, Shaw nodded. “Mary Angela?”
“Yep,” North said, and they went to find a convention program.
Chapter 27
IN THE HOTEL’S LAUNDRY room, Shaw was getting dinner and a show. Or a snack and a show. Or dessert and a show. Dessert was chocolate ice cream, prepared by Chef Marisa, who had taken one look at Shaw and decided he needed a bowl of ice cream with toasted almonds and raspberry sauce. The show was North; Shaw adjusted his seat on top of a commercial washing machine, stretched his legs, and said, “Now spin around.”
