Infected: Shift (39 page)

Javier—real name Brody Walker—held the flame briefly to the tiny hole in the center of the can where the dried lump of pot sat and took a deep breath of smoke through the mouth of the can. He held it until his coughing became convulsive, and then it all came out in a single spasmic cough. He then held out the can, his brown eyes glazing over, and asked in a harsh voice, “Want some? This is good shit.”

Holden shook his head. “Nah, I don’t like to mix booze and pot. Gets me too fucked up.” He hadn’t been drinking, but he wasn’t interested in getting high right now. He was on a mission.

He was also on painkillers. Being stabbed in the stomach at least got you that, even though these were so mild he bet Roan could down the whole bottle and think they were Flintstone’s Vitamins.

Brody nodded, and Holden pretended not to notice the glass meth pipe sitting on the nightstand, right next to the potato chip bag and crumpled pack of Camels. No one became a hustler if they were overly concerned about their health, or had any other way of getting the money they needed. A good thing in Brody’s case, as right now he looked like a corpse waiting to happen, propped up on a messy motel bed. “Cool. More for me.”

“So Cowboy told me you’d been working gigs with Coyote.”

“Some, not a lot. I wasn’t with him on the last one.”

“I assume not. Do you know what it was?”

Brody took a swallow of his energy drink (Wouldn’t that be a counter to the pot?), and had a potato chip before telling him, “Couldn’t do it. I’m not into group sex.”

“So it was a gang bang gig?” That tracked with what he'd seen on the snuff site.

“Yeah. Not my thing, even though it mighta been a way into movies.”

“So it was a porn gig?”

“Nah.” He paused, frowned. “Maybe. It was hard to say.” Holden didn’t know if the pot had made Brody’s natural inclination toward vagueness any worse than it already was. Even though he had been born and raised somewhere in Kansas (he refused to name the city, saying no one had heard of it anyways), he always spoke like English was a foreign language to him, like he wasn’t sure what half the words actually meant.

“Who was the gig for?”

“Dunno. Some guy he met on Craigslist.”

“Coyote had a Craigslist ad?”

He was taking another hit, so he simply nodded and didn’t speak until he let the smoke out. “Yeah. He said he was tired of doin’ it curbside, that there was more money doin’ it online.”

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 anymore 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.