Double Blind (16 page)

Oh, fuck, but this had been a big mistake. Randy held up his hand. “Crabtree, I appreciate—”

Crabtree held up a hand, too, and Randy instantly fell silent.

“This is for my own curiosity, Jansen. I want to meet the man you couldn’t read. Besides, I’ll be better able to give you a referral for Sam if I know what I’m looking at.”

Randy kept quiet, but he was reeling inside, kicking himself for following the instinct to come up here.

Crabtree tilted his head to the side and gave Randy a very grandfatherly look which was both reassuring and absolutely horrifying at the same time. “I’m not going to hurt him, Jansen. Either one of them. If you thought I might, you wouldn’t have come to me at all.”

“Sam is from Iowa,” Randy said carefully. “And despite what he can do with his mouth, he’s pretty innocent.”

Crabtree nodded, still smiling. “Yeah, he’s a sweet one.” Randy watched Crabtree’s face intently, looking for even the barest hint of licentiousness, but he really did just look like a grandfather now. Anyway, Crabtree was all about bears and otters, drifting between the two depending on his mood. Both Ethan and Sam were safe.

As safe as they could be, having dinner with the mob.

Randy’s palms, suddenly sweaty, curled against his jeans.

Crabtree, of course, did not miss this. “This is purely a friendly visit,” he said gently. “I won’t be asking anyone for payment of any kind.”

Randy snorted. “Crabtree, you’re the one that told me there’s no such thing as a friendly visit.”

“Family is different,” Crabtree said, and Randy couldn’t help it. His mouth fell open. Crabtree laughed. “I like you, Jansen. You have the same code as I do. Yes, I look at you as family.”

What code?
Randy wanted to ask, but this question was crowded out by thoughts of the many, very twisted ways he had “paid” for Crabtree’s services in the past.

Crabtree’s laugh darkened a little. “Very well, incestuous family. But family all the same.”

“Thank you?” Randy said, then paused as another wrinkle appeared on the horizon. “Okay, Crabtree, normally I don’t mind—”

“There will be no payment required other than a very nice dinner and a few hands of cards. And I’m not going to get in the middle of your blooming love life, Jansen, so settle down. Unless I decide he’s not worthy of putting his sausage in your cute little buns, but from what I hear he’s more than adequate to the task, metaphorically and otherwise.” Crabtree waved a hand at Randy in dismissal and began to sift through his papers again. “Go back home and get to work. I’ll see you at seven.”

Randy nodded and rose, feeling slightly dizzy. The sensation didn’t abate as he headed back down the stairs, and he outright ignored Billy when he hollered Randy’s name as he passed. He managed to make it all the way to his bike and even rode it several blocks before he had to pull over by the side of the road.

He threw up once, waited, then did it again.

Once he wasn’t shaking so hard, he headed home, parked the bike in the garage and headed inside, where Ethan and Sam were trying to exist politely in the same small space of the living room, both not watching a home and garden show on television. They both looked up at him as he entered, and when Randy saw their beautiful faces and thought about what he’d so foolishly done, he nearly had to run to the bathroom and have another round of dry heaves.

“Peaches,” he said, almost steady, “I need you to clean the house for me.
Clean.
I mean, fucking clean enough for the fucking Queen of England. When Mitch comes home, lock him in your room and do not let him make a mess. In fact, if you could fuck him into a coma, that’d be good, because he is going to try slit my throat when he finds out what I just did, and I’d rather he didn’t have the energy.”

“Okay,” Sam said, wide-eyed. “But—”

“Slick,” Randy said, cutting Sam off, “brush your teeth and come with me, because we’re going shopping. And remind me to pick up some cards on the way home, because I just realized I forgot once already.”

Ethan rose, frowning elegantly. “Randy, what’s going on? You look green.”

Randy ignored him, too, looking at his watch. “Fuck, there isn’t hardly any
time!
How the hell am I going to cook something good enough for Crabtree and get to the mall all at the same time?”

“Crabtree?” Sam, who had risen, too, sank back down. His face was white. “The gangster?”

Randy nodded. “He’s coming for dinner.
Do not tell your husband
. But don’t let him get drunk if he finds out, either.”

“What the hell is going on?” Ethan asked, amused.

“What’s going on is that you’re coming with me,” Randy said, grabbing his arm, “because you aren’t meeting Crabtree in clothes you’re wearing for the second day in a row.”

“Who is Crabtree?” Ethan asked as Randy led him toward the door.

“Santa Claus,” Sam whispered, reaching to pick up the newspaper Mitch had strewn over the carpet. “With a big, bloody knife.”

“Is this
Crabtree man actually a gangster?” Ethan asked as they pulled onto a busy street. “Or are you just being colorful?”

“He’s colorful, but yes, he’s a gangster.” Randy rubbed his hand against the back of his neck. He looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Of sorts. He’s
connected
to the mob. I don’t know the full extent of it, and I don’t want to. All I know is that he’s Billy Herod’s godfather, and that while he’s not a big cog in the wheels that keep Las Vegas turning, he’s knows how and when to grease them. I also know that he has killed people, both by order and by his own hands.”

It was all so ridiculous that Ethan thought it had to be a joke, that Randy was trying to upset him, but nothing about Randy’s demeanor hinted that this was anything but the real deal. “But why is a gangster coming to your house for dinner? And why does this mean I have to get dressed up?”

“We all have to get dressed up. I don’t know what the fuck we’re going to do with Mitch, but Peaches will think of something. As to why he’s coming”—Randy flattened his lips into a line and shook his head—“that’s because I’m a big, fat idiot and drew his attention. Of course, from the sound of things, you already had his eye anyway, so I suppose I just put the inevitable in motion earlier.”

“Me?” Ethan repeated, surprised.

Randy grinned, but it was a bitter grin. “I didn’t read you right and lost a bet to Billy. Word has already gotten around, and Crabtree wants to meet you.”

Suddenly none of this was amusing anymore. “Is he going to kill me?”

“No,” Randy said, and Ethan took an odd comfort in the conviction Randy put in the word. “But here’s some advice: he loves cats. I mean, he
loves cats
. If you don’t love them, too, learn to fake it quick. Outside of that, he’s perfectly rational. A little perverted, but he’ll leave you alone. Though you should probably get ready to watch him flirt with me.”

And so the Santa Claus mobster who loved cats was gay. Ethan wondered, briefly, how he had gone from being the only gay man he knew unless Nick was in town to being steeped in them. He sank back against the seat and stared out the windshield as he tried to process. “And where are we going right now?”

“Miracle Mile. You need some H&M. We’ll swing by Whole Foods on the way home and pray that the culinary gods strike me with divine inspiration.”

“So this Crabtree invited himself to your house for dinner on short notice and expects you to have your house and guests scrubbed clean with a gourmet spread waiting for him?” Ethan asked, unimpressed.

Randy tapped the steering wheel with his thumb a minute before answering. When he did, his voice had the same instructive tone it had taken when he’d spoken so passionately about the law of averages.

“Here’s a poker lesson for you, Slick. Let me rattle off a few facts for you about Crabtree, and since you’re still pretty green, I’ll even repeat the ones I’ve already given you. He works for Billy Herod, which is to say that he works for a child of the mob that watches him, and you’ll remember I said that Billy runs casino theater, not an actual casino. Crabtree is babysitting, in short. He’s a big, out bear in a hyper-masculine underworld. When you meet him, get a good look at his teeth and note the number of gold caps he flashes. He’s never once had a cavity in his life, and he didn’t cap healthy teeth for fun. He’s smart as a whip, but he’s weird and quirky, and it’s a really, really good thing you’re not a furry man with a bit of belly and a pretty mouth. He doesn’t rape anybody, but—well.” He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck again. “Crabtree is a very powerful man who has spent a lot of time with men even more powerful than he is, men who do not give him much respect. He’s chosen to take on Billy of his own free will because he loved Billy Senior, and there is no question that if you need something, Crabtree can get it done. Anything.”

Ethan began to understand. “But the one thing that’s fragile about him is the amount of respect he gets—honest respect.”

“That, and his bizarre weakness for kittens.” Randy shrugged. “I don’t have to have Sam scrub the house and try to truss Mitch into something presentable. I don’t have to kill myself pulling a Martha Stewart. But I’m trying to because if I pull it off, I will be making one hell of a genuflection to somebody who has saved my ass many times in the past and will probably do so in the future, even if I serve him frozen pizza wearing stained jeans.” He paused. “Probably.”

Ethan digested this, the lengths Randy was willing to go to give a nod to an emotionally vulnerable gangster just because he felt he owed him, and he felt an odd, unexpected tug at the edge of his heart.

But then Randy said, “There is no compromising on your wardrobe, though.”

“But why?” Ethan asked. A fissure of alarm shot through him. “He’s not going to expect me to—”

“No!” Randy said, very sharply. “No. I told you, he’s all otters and bears. But you need to look good for him because he’s coming to scope out
you
, Slick. Unless you go courting somebody higher up on the food chain, Crabtree can either make or break you in Vegas. And you don’t want to go any higher on the food chain than Crabtree.”

“Do I want to be made in Vegas?” Ethan asked.

“Fuck yeah,” Randy replied. “You sure has hell don’t want to be broken.”

Ethan would have thought he already was, but he didn’t see the point in saying so.

They were heading onto the Strip, or rather, near it—Randy seemed to be taking great pains to stay off of Las Vegas Boulevard itself, which given the snail crawl their cab had done even in the early hours of the morning seemed a wise move. He wove his way back down the side streets until he had them entering the parking garage behind the Planet Hollywood casino, whose very existence boggled Ethan.

“Does McDonald’s have a casino?” he asked as Randy led him to the mall entrance.

Randy looked thoughtful for a moment. “Well, the one at Harrah’s certainly has the neon glitter down pat.” He took Ethan’s hand and led him into the main body of the mall. “Come on. I’m not kidding. We’re so close on time now that we’re partitioning seconds.”

Ethan soon found that without Randy’s hand he’d have been lost in the crowd, because Randy was moving at light speed. The other issue was that Ethan was having a serious rubbernecking problem.

“There’s a
sky
in here,” he shouted to Randy. He had to shout, because club music was blaring from up ahead, echoing in the cavernous ceiling. At least, he thought it was a ceiling. It had to be, because in here it was dusk, but it was blazing noon outside. Still, the buildings were—well, they were
buildings,
not storefronts. And they shone in the same “neon glitter” as the buildings on the Strip. It was a mini-Strip within the Strip. Or something.

“Come on,” Randy called, tugging him around a corner, and then they were at the source of the music, which was also a huge, pulsing fountain light show in the middle of a corner atrium. Ethan staggered back, caught by the sight, remembering the echo of another fountain in the dark.

Randy tugged at him again. “Oh, fuck that, Slick. After Bellagio, this is nothing. Besides, it looks like a bunch of skinny dicks shooting cum.”

Ethan blinked, looked again at the pulsing bursts of water, then burst out laughing.

Randy got behind him and began to push him like a snowplow. “Come
on
.”

The shopping expedition at H&M was the strangest and the fastest Ethan had ever been a part of. He wasn’t exactly averse to shopping, but it was usually a solitary and sober experience, not a frenzied group project where his lab partner alternated between fashion drill sergeant and the lecher who insisted on standing in the doorway and watching him dress and undress.

“I never asked, Slick,” Randy said as he watched Ethan skim a pair of black trousers up over his hips. “What did you do for a living before you ran away to Vegas to meet me?”

“I was an investment broker.” Ethan smoothed his hand over the pleats of the trousers after buttoning them, eyeing their line critically in the mirror. “Do I actually need something this fancy?”

“You need a whole wardrobe, Slick. But yeah, you’ll wear these tonight.” He ran a hand over Ethan’s backside, then nodded. “Investment broker. So you played the stock market?”

“I invested clients’ money in various ways. Stocks, sometimes, but also funds and other projects as well.” Ethan sifted through the pile of clothing they’d amassed on the bench. “Where’s that black iridescent shirt? It would look good with this.”

Randy reached into the hallway and produced the shirt. “Do you miss it? Being a broker.”

Ethan shrugged and tried to focus on the shirt. He didn’t want to talk about this. “Are we done here?”

“Just a few more things. I think you’re right about the shirt, which with the pants can be tonight’s outfit, so as soon as we pick the jacket, you’ll be set. The rest we can return if it doesn’t fit.” He handed Ethan a stylish gray jacket. “Did you
like
it?”

“The jacket? I haven’t tried it on.”

But Randy wasn’t going to be dissuaded. “Being a broker. Did you like it?”

Ethan fussed with the collar of the shirt. Eventually he shrugged. “It was fine.”

It hadn’t been fine, of course, he admitted to himself as they finished up shopping and headed back to the truck, and he ruminated on his now-past life all the way to the grocery store. He had both loved and hated being a broker. He loved watching money compound and amass, but it was like so much of the rest of his life: it was never his money or his life he was amassing. His clients were grateful for his skill at reading the market, and he had been told he had a killer instinct for knowing when to switch from one type of investment account to another, but he’d had to convince himself more and more frequently that this was enough. And eventually he’d begun to be more aggressive with his own savings, investing his own money, but that had felt lonely. He wanted to be investing with a partner, like the husbands and wives planning their retirement futures, which was why he had gone to Nick. Like a fool, he’d thought just because Nick had sworn to him it was Ethan he actually loved, he whom he truly felt he was married to, that when push came to shove, he would choose Ethan—

The world went soft, and dull, and even though there was nothing wrong with Ethan’s hearing or his vision, as he stood staring into Randy’s cart, the real world fell away, and he was falling back, back into that cold, dark space inside his own head—

—and then something was pressing against his mouth, something soft and small and sharp, and he tasted, too, the tips of Randy’s fingers.