Shift: Infected, #5, page 25
Not a bad idea actually. Although cops had started cracking down on Craigslist prostitution ads, they mostly focused on underage and female. They didn’t seem to give too much of a damn about male prostitutes. Maybe because no one wanted to be seen doing “faggy stuff” like that. “Do you know what Coyote’s e-mail address was?”
Brody’s glazed eyes settled on the television, which was now running an ad for “natural male enhancement.” Also known as boner pills. It was hilarious really. They couldn’t cure cancer, HIV, infection, or the common cold, but goddamn, they could give eighty-year-old men who really shouldn’t be having sex hard-ons until the day they died. What was extra hilarious was that this also solved the boner problems of male prostitutes—now they didn’t have to pretend to be into it, they could just use pharmaceuticals to fake attraction. Coincidence? “Umm, yeah. It was—” He scratched his head and used his foot to scratch an itch on his opposite leg. Considering how stoned he was, that was an amazing bit of coordination. “—Coyote404 at, umm... I wanna say ‘sexmail’? But that ain’t right.”
Holden had to think about that for a moment. “You don’t mean ‘hotmail’, do you?”
He snapped and pointed at him, a stoner’s lazy smile creasing his face. “Yeah, man, that’s it. He gave it to me in case I wanted to get in on the Craigslist stuff with him, but I dunno. I mean, it sounds good—God knows I don’t like street cruisin’— but... fuck it. Seems like work. And I don’t wanna hang around some public library so I can answer e-mails from ugly dudes who can only get it over a computer, you know? Maybe I’m old-fashioned.”
“How many cute clients do we get on the street, Jav? Last I counted, it was between zero and minus two.”
That made him chuckle and nod knowingly. “Yeah. Ain’t like the movies, is it?”
“Depends on the film.” He wanted to make a joke about a horror movie, but didn’t. “You stayin’ here for a while?”
He nodded. “Coupla days. I needed a break, you know? So I’m havin’ a vacation.” He snickered at the idea. “It’s over when I run outta money.”
Brody was homeless. Not really a shock. People would probably be surprised to learn how often male prostitutes were homeless, or at least constantly in housing flux. It was a hard life, especially if you were supporting as many addictions as Brody was. “If you need a place to crash for a while, I can find you something.”
He shook his head again. “Naw. After what happened to Coyote, I’m moving on. Place seems dangerous, you know? I heard from this guy I know that Salt Lake City has a desperate need for boys, so I thought I’d check it out.”
“Makes sense. Ultra-repressed Mormons probably can’t wait to suck a dick.”
“That’s my theory.”
“Go where the repression is. That philosophy of life has never steered me wrong.” Holden reached into his coat pocket and hesitated. If he gave Javier this, he had no guarantee he’d spend it on what he asked him to; he could turn around and spend it on more drugs. But what if he did? He had a shitty life, and one of his friends was just murdered (online for all to see, although he was unaware of this, and Holden wasn’t going to tell him). Let him have all the fucking drugs he wanted. He pulled out the money—two twenties and a couple of fives—and stood up, putting it on the nightstand beside the ashtray. “Buy a bus ticket, get something to eat that doesn’t come out of a vending machine. Okay?”
Brody’s eyes seemed to move slowly and deliberately to the money, and then up to his face. “Thanks dude. Wanna come with me?”
“No, I have enough clients as it is. But if it ever dries up, I just might.”
“Awesome.” Holden turned toward the door, and Brody said, “Hey, you leavin’? You don’t hafta leave. I wouldn’t mind the company.” He gazed at him with soft eyes, putting a hand on the empty side of the bed, in case he didn’t realize this was a come-on. It was much, much subtler than his last one.
Brody didn’t talk about his past or himself ever. What Holden knew about him was the sum total of what everyone else knew: he was from Kansas, had a stepsister in a wheelchair for some reason (undisclosed), and ended up on the West Coast because he wanted to get as far away from Kansas as humanly possible before falling in the ocean. That was it. But Holden didn’t need Brody to acknowledge he’d been sexually abused in his life, from a young age and often. Sometimes you could just see it, the empty hunger of the walking wounded, but it was more the way they treated sex. For some, like Brody, it was the equivalent of a handshake: there was no pleasure in it, it was expected, and they obliged because that was all anyone ever wanted from them.
The funny thing was, Holden was pretty sure Brody wasn’t gay. He wasn’t straight either. He had no sexuality whatsoever; it had been robbed from him along with nearly everything else. He was asexual, but could fake sexuality with anyone, because it meant nothing to him. Not now, not ever. Maybe that’s why he always felt bad for Brody. His abuser had left him hollow, and he’d never recovered from it. He was a doll always waiting to be posed. “I have a gig in a half hour, but thanks.”
“Rain check?”
“Rain check.” Of course he would never collect, and Brody probably knew that too. That’s probably why he smiled at him.
This was a huge lead. With Coyote’s e-mail address, all he had to do was hack into his account, and it was more than likely, if this was a Craigslist gig, there’d still be e-mail evidence of who he was supposed to meet and where.
And then they could kill this fucking bastard.
ROAN had spent his day discovering a new definition of futility: finding friends of Jordan and Brittney.
Now, he had names of best friends—Darren Brewster and Bethany Stevens, respectively—but finding them turned out to be a huge pain in the ass. Bethany was apparently off in Europe with her parents and had been since last month. The woman who answered at their home thought they might have been in Sweden right now but wasn’t sure. They weren’t due back for another two weeks.
Darren was another story. He was the son of Sidney Brewster, a guy who had made part of his fortune in a private security service that only worked with wealthy executives and politicians. (You know, armored limos, mercenary ex-soldiers who became bodyguards and armored limo drivers.) They weren’t Blackwater—they didn’t care about national security in the least, and foreign wars held no appeal. They were still a bunch of fucking bastards, though.
Brewster’s firm had been doing some business down in Mexico, protecting businessmen who could afford something better than the police force, and as such there were some concerns that he had run afoul of one of the drug cartels down there. Because of that, apparently there wasn’t a single member of the Brewster family who didn’t travel around with bodyguards. (Even here? Oh sure, the cartels had feelers everywhere, but it seemed pretty damn silly.) On top of this, Darren was impossible to get a hold of. Roan tried calling the Brewster compound, but he was told to make an appointment if he wanted to speak to Mr. Brewster. When he said he wanted to talk to Darren, not Sidney, he was told he’d have to see Sidney to get permission (!) to speak with Darren. Did Jordan have to go through that process? He doubted it.
Frustrated beyond belief, he started scouring Darren’s Facebook page and attempted e-mail. He pretended to be a girl who went to Rutherford and wanted to hang out with him sometime. He waited to see if Darren would take the bait. If he was at all security savvy, he’d recognize it for the security breach it was, but he was counting on Darren being your average hormonal teenage boy (i.e., dumb).
But after that, it was their bizarro night out with the (mostly) straight hockey players. Not that they were planning a bizarre night, but how could it not be? These guys were younger than them (well, Dylan was closer to their ages), most were from other countries (Canada being the dominant one), and of course they were uberjocks. Why did they want to hang out with a couple of gay guys who weren’t uberjocks? He hated to think that Dylan’s tease about him being their “gay mascot” was true, but to some degree it probably was. Oh, and also there may have been hopes of getting involved in a huge fight.
Roan had expected Grey and Scott, maybe Tank, but there were many more guys involved in the bar crawl. Yes, Grey, Scott, and Tank, but also Jeff the New Yorker, Sandy the tall blond Russian, Richie with the oft-broken nose—all members of the big parking lot fight—and there were two new guys as well (new to Roan, at any rate): Barrett and Zach. Barrett was a light-skinned black man with broad shoulders and a lean frame, who said defensively, even though neither he nor Dylan had said anything, “Yes, there are black guys playing hockey. Not a lot, but a few. I’m not the only one.”
“I didn’t think you were,” Roan replied. “I’ve seen Jarome Iginla.” He was the captain of the Calgary Flames, and while not the only black man in hockey, he was probably the most well known.
That made Barrett blink in surprise. “Oh, yeah. I thought you weren’t a big hockey fan.”
“Canadian husband. I know my Canadian hockey teams.”
He seemed to accept that, mildly impressed.
Zach looked almost prepubescent. He had a round face and wheat-colored hair so pale it was more of a suggestion of color than an actual hue. Confirming Roan’s suspicion, Richie put an arm around Zach’s shoulders and said, “He’s only nineteen. He can drink in Canada but he can’t drink here, so we’re gonna try and fake him in.”
“Might be hard,” Dylan said. Since he was a bartender, he had a great idea of who was at risk of being carded and who wasn’t.
“Let me get him through,” Sandy said, his Russian accent making his words sound more exotic than they actually were. “I’ll pretend I don’t speak the language and start getting belligerent. That usually works.”
“Only ’cause you’re a scary, big Russian,” Jeff replied. “If you were from Moosejaw, no one would care.”
“What’s wrong with Moosejaw?” Zach asked, his brow furrowing. Oh, was that where he was from?
Because there were so many of them, they took two cars, but because he and Dylan were taking the GTO, they were able to fit Tank, Grey, and Scott in their car. All three of them praised the mix CD he’d put together for Grey and wanted Roan to make them each one. Grey had asked him to put together a mix CD they could listen to at practices, since Grey was so impressed by These Arms Are Snakes. Roan couldn’t imagine anything sillier, but was able to throw something together quickly and give it to him.
Roan actually thought Grey might trash it, because he'd thrown on songs that he knew might offend some people, such as the two Pansy Division songs (“Hockey Hair” and “Manada” the French-language version) and ones with buttloads of obvious cursing. (“Stoopid Ass” was probably the most egregious offender there.) But astonishingly, most of the team enjoyed it, and thought the Pansy Division songs were funny. The coach claimed the Nirvana song gave him a headache (“Scentless Apprentice”) and made them turn it off, but the guys in general loved it. Dylan told them not to encourage him, since he loved perplexing people with his obscure and bizarre music choices, but Dylan flashed him an affectionate, exasperated look as he said it. Roan told them he’d see what he could do in his free time.
It was a pub crawl of great scope. They started off in a sports bar where almost all the Falcons guys were recognized (not Zach), and then they moved on to a trendy nightclub that was often difficult to get into, although not for local sports guys. It was slightly Eurotrash, filled with lots of neon and glass and metal, and everyone in it seemed coated in fake bake and wore clothes so tight they could have been sprayed on, even the guys. Although about half the (straight) crew chatted up some women, it was astonishingly dull. Even Tank made a face and said, “This reminds me of a club I went to in Montreal for my eighteenth birthday. That place sucked.”
Scott grunted an affirmative and swirled the dregs of his drink around in his glass. Most of the guys were pacing themselves, save for Jeff, who was knocking his drinks back like they were all ice water. But to his credit, it hadn’t had any effect on him yet.
So they moved on to a slightly dingier bar that was marginally more entertaining, although there was a baseball game playing on the TV over the bar. Sandy and Jeff watched it for a couple of minutes, and Jeff suddenly exclaimed, “Why does everyone love that fucking sport? My dad once took me to a Mets game, and I was bored out of my fucking skull. Nothin’ happened. For hours, nothin’ happened. At least in hockey, there’s always the potential of a fight.”
“I don’t get it either,” Sandy admitted. “But if I were getting paid as much as they are, I’d learn to put up with it.”
Jeff shrugged and grimaced. “Good point. So what does that tub o’ guts on the mound make? A couple million?”
“I bet he gets winded walking to the clubhouse,” Grey said, smirking at his own bitchiness. But, to be fair, all the Falcons at the table were lean and hard, toned to perfection. If you had need of a cement wall but no cement, they could easily stand in for it. They were in so much better shape than the star pitcher being featured on the screen it was sort of comical and grossly unfair.
Dylan wasn’t drinking any booze, as he really didn’t like alcohol (funny for a bartender), and Roan only had a drink if they had a decent microbrew available. So far, he’d only had one.
Next bar over, when Dylan disappeared to the bathroom, Sandy asked him, “So who’s the woman?”
Grey punched him in the shoulder, almost knocking the Russian out of his chair. “Dude, you don’t ask shit like that.”
He rubbed his shoulder and flashed him an indignant look. If Grey could hurt a guy as big as Sandy, that was impressive, especially since he obviously held back. “What, you’re not curious?”
“Neither of us are women, so neither of us are,” Roan told him. Wasn’t the first time he’d been asked such a thing, probably wouldn’t be the last.
Sandy scowled. “You know what I mean. Who—”
“Shut up,” Scott said in a low, deadly voice. Sandy glanced at his team captain, and Roan saw immediately that he was giving up. Obeying a direct order from his captain, or did he really not like the murderous look in his eyes? Both?
“Fine,” he said, sulking. “I just wondered.”
Another boring bar awaited them, and it was at this point that Dylan offered to take them all to Panic. Although Sandy, Jeff, and Barrett didn’t seem thrilled with the idea, the fact that Scott, Grey, and Tank wanted to go seemed to clinch the deal. (Zach and Richie didn’t seem to care either way.)
So they all went to Panic, where it was trance night, meaning they were greeted by high-energy dance music and an amused Luis behind the bar. No one seemed to recognize the guys as hockey players, although they all recognized Dylan, and some recognized Roan. They got lots of free drinks, inspiring the guys (not him and Dylan, though) to dare each other to drink the “girliest” drinks possible. Tank won the contest with a “pink confetti daiquiri,” which he actually said wasn’t bad and ordered a second one to prove it. Dylan told him it had pomegranate juice in it, but he had no idea what the “confetti” part of it was or even meant.
A cute guy who looked like a James Franco stand-in came to the table and asked Scott to dance. Sandy and Jeff burst into howls of laughter, but Scott’s guard was obviously down from the several drinks he'd already had, and Dylan and Roan watched as he smirked and visually sized the guy up. “Sure,” Scott said, getting up and following him to the dance floor.
This made his teammates laugh even harder. Apparently they thought this was Scott playing along and being silly, confirming that none of them knew he was bisexual. Except perhaps Grey—Roan wasn’t convinced he didn’t know. Not only because he was Scott’s roommate, but also because Grey wasn’t as dumb as he liked people to think he was.
After watching Scott dance for a bit (he wasn’t bad), a rather drunk Zach proclaimed, “I wanna dance!”
“No you don’t, jailbait,” Jeff said, and it sounded funny and vaguely threatening in his thick New York accent.
A twink at the bar overheard Zach’s proclamation, and came up to the table. “I’ll dance with you, sweetie.” He was probably barely legal himself.
“Awesome,” Zach said, scraping his chair back. As he stood up unsteadily, he added, “Don’t get grabby. I’m straight.”
“You know what the difference between a straight guy and a gay guy is?” the twink replied. “A six pack.”
Zach looked at him blankly, confirming how drunk he was. “Huh?” But the twink just headed to the dance floor, and Zach followed.
They watched for a moment, and then burst into laughter, as Zach was no Scott—his idea of dancing looked a lot like a seizure, with some kind of abortive robot moves thrown in. Now everybody knew for certain he was straight. “I thought you Canadian dudes could hold your liquor better,” Jeff said, wiping tears from his eyes.
“Depends on the Canadian dude,” Barrett said.
“If he was Quebecois, he could,” Tank, the only Quebecois at the table, insisted.
“If he was Quebecois, he’d secede from the team,” Richie replied.
Grey slapped a twenty dollar bill in the center of the table and said, “I betcha before we head outta here, he dances on a table.” So they started throwing money in a pool, betting on whether he would dance on a table (or the bar) or pass out first. Jeff bet he’d vomit first; Barrett thought he might actually make out with a dude.
Roan skirted the dance floor on his way to the bathroom, as his couple of beers had finally caught up with his bladder, and he chuckled to himself, mainly because he never thought he’d have such a good time with a bunch of straight jocks. He still had no idea why they wanted to hang around with him, but there was some fun to be had in male bonding. And these guys were friends as much as teammates, which made them easy to be around, even though they taunted and razzed each other as only macho male guys could (although nobody really razzed Scott or Grey—probably because Scott was their captain, and probably because Grey was essentially a sentient pile of muscle).
