Johnny V and the Razor (3 page)

Sloane went to the bar. Tommy, the bartender, had Canadian whiskey neat waiting. Men made room for Sloane.

In the packed club, men talked to wait-boys, who offered time in back rooms at five dollars a half hour. A jazz quartet on a low stage roughed up a tune Sloane had heard Ellington’s band play. Up against the back wall, poker tables were full. Muscle was walking between tables, keeping the games friendly.

Nick came out from the alcove that led to his office and signaled Sloane.

With an office barely big enough to hold a desk, two men, and two chairs, no one would have guessed Sloane’s brother ran more than half the bootlegging operations in the city. The small room was sideways, like a short hallway. Sloane had told him to set it up like that. If a man came in with a gun, he would have a tough shot unless Nick was facing the door, and he never did.

Nick was sitting behind his toy-size desk. The green-shaded lamp perched on the corner threw shadows across his narrow face. He looked like the stingiest accountant in the country.

“You’re late,” he said.

“Stopped.” Sloane slid into the chair on his side of the desk.

”Done?”

“All but the cops and the pictures.”

“Witnesses?”

Sloane slouched down in his chair, something he’d learned to do in grade school when he didn’t want the teacher to see a lie in his eyes. “Think I suddenly got dumb?”

“Where’s the car?”

“Dumped.”

“Someone saw you at Dora’s.” Nick leaned over his desk, palms against the wood. “Said you had a pretty new face with you.”

Sloane leaned forward, elbows on his thighs, deadly hands hanging down between his legs. “So?”

Nick pushed his chair back. It scraped the concrete floor. “Nothing,” he said. “Been worried about you. Nobody’s seen you with anyone in months.”

“Been busy.”

“Deal was, we get more than half the territory locked down, we get sixty percent of the profit.”

“And?”

A slow smile stretched Nick’s face into something that should have been pleasant, but wasn’t. “With Donnelly gone, we have 65% of the territory locked up,” he said.

Before tonight in Dora’s, before Johnny, Sloane would have cared. As it was, he said, “Donnelly told me where his stash was. Said I could have it if I let him go.”

Nick twisted his face into something no one would have wanted to see, not in their darkest nightmare. “Where?”

Sloane told Nick what he’d gotten out of Donnelly before he sent him into the dark for good.

“Half is yours,” Nick said.

“You know where to put it.” A twinge of guilt twisted through Sloane’s gut. Nick had never been anything but fair to him.

Nick went on talking—interest rates, percentages, stock margins—things Sloane had never cared about. Restless, Sloane stretched out his long legs, let his head fall back against the chair. Years ago, he’d given up fighting the urge that always came after a kill, like thunder after lightning. Up in his rooms, he could have had Johnny on the floor, just held him down and taken what he wanted. But he’d fought it, and it was eating him up because he still wanted it.

“…candles?”

Silence made Sloane pop his head up and focus on Nick. “What?”

Sighing, Nick pulled a pack of Lucky Strikes from his pocket, drew a smoke, and lit up. “I said a bad storm’s blowing in. You have candles?”

“Yeah.” Sloane got to his feet. “Anything else?”

“No.”

“Long night,” Sloane said. “See you in the morning.”

His fingers were brushing the doorknob when Nick said, “Little brother?”

When Nick said it like that, he was smelling around for trouble. Sloane turned, his heart pounding, his moves slow, easy. “Yeah?”

“Everything go all right with Donnelly?”

If Nick scented anything, he’d be on Sloane’s back trail like a hound. He pushed thoughts of Johnny out of his mind. “Went slick as oil on water.”

Nick puffed smoke toward the ceiling in slow, lazy rings and nodded. “Sleep good.”

Out in the bar, Sloane caught Stephen’s eye just as he was delivering a drink order. When he came over, Sloane said, “Upstairs.”

R
IDING
across country when you were nineteen and most men around you were bigger and better fed, you didn’t admit to being scared about anything. So Johnny had never told anyone how much storms frightened him. He’d seen tornadoes lift whole houses into the sky and smash them apart like wood toys.

Thunder rolled across the sky. He turned over and drew the heavy blanket over his head. Sloane’s place didn’t have any windows. But the whole roof was made of what Johnny thought of as glass bricks. The sky showed through, distorted. When lightning flashed, the whole bedroom lit up, like flash bulbs from a hundred cameras.

The storm was getting closer. Lightning crackled. Thunder clapped, and it sounded like it was right over his head. Johnny jumped out of bed, ran toward the door, and stopped. Past the door, he heard something worse, something he’d heard in boxcars in the middle of the night.

Someone was talking in a low, pleading voice. Johnny didn’t have to hear the words to know what he was saying. He’d sounded just like that. It hadn’t changed anything.

The door was cracked maybe an inch. No light came in. He pressed his eye to the crack.

First he saw Sloane’s face, the hard face of a man who’d stopped listening. He was pushing his unzipped pants down with one hand and bending a boy over the couch, a boy about Johnny’s age, naked, ass up. Trembling, Johnny saw that the naked boy’s eyes were squeezed shut. He was gritting his teeth, and his whole face was deep red. Sweat or tears were running down his cheeks. Whatever was about to happen, it wasn’t the first time.

Johnny knew he should go back to bed, should press the door closed, but he couldn’t. Just hours ago, he’d wanted Sloane to have him, to give him anything he wanted. Now he could see what Sloane wanted, and
how
he wanted it.

Thunder rolled overhead again, louder this time, shaking the walls. Like he’d woken up from a bad dream, Sloane backed away, looking at Johnny’s door. "Get dressed.” He handed the boy his clothes. “And tell my brother I said I’ll pay off your debt. Go home.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Hurry up,” Sloane said. “Before the storm gets you.”

The boy pulled his pants on, grabbed his shirt, and went out, shutting the door quietly behind him.

Sloane bent down, out of Johnny’s view, and when he stood up, his chest was still bare, but his pants were done up. He moved silently across the living room, toward Johnny’s door, barefoot. Johnny fought the instinct to slam the door and lock it. He moved backward carefully, desperate to stay on his feet, not wanting to find himself on his back looking up at Sloane.

Sloane pushed the door open. “What are you doing up?”

One bad step, and Johnny would be on his back, looking up at Sloane’s hard on. Trying not to let his lips tremble, he said, “Thunder woke me.”

Sloane moved past him and sat on the bed. “Storms scare you?”

Uneasy at the thought of Sloane behind him, Johnny turned around. “Yeah. Sometimes.” But lying to Sloane made Johnny even more nervous. “No,” he said. “All the time. Even little ones.”

Sloane got a look on his face like Johnny had a lot worse things to be scared of. “I need to tell you something,” he said.

“What?”

“If anyone asks where I found you, don’t talk about Donnelly. Don’t tell anyone you were his driver.”

The storm was really revving up. Wind was blowing over the glass roof. He was alone with Sloane. He should have stayed with the Packard. “I won’t make any trouble for you,” Johnny said.

“I know.”

Something about the way Sloane said it, the way he kept his voice low made him seem harmless, the way a tiger with a full belly could be harmless. “You think they’ll play the game tomorrow if the field’s all wet?”

“Maybe.” Sloane fell back onto the bed and scrubbed his hands over his face. “If they don’t, I’ll take you somewhere else.”

Johnny took in Sloane’s hard flat belly, his arms heavy with muscle, the way his pants pulled against his crotch, showing the curved lines of his cock. Tonight, Johnny had come so close to dying that being on his knees between Sloane’s legs seemed almost… safe. And he
wanted
to be on his knees, inhaling Sloane’s scent, pressing his legs farther apart.

Kneeling at the edge of the bed, Johnny pressed his face into Sloane’s crotch and kissed softly.
Sloane reached down and ran his long fingers through Johnny’s hair, and everything was going good until thunder rolled across the sky. Johnny nearly jumped out of his skin.

“Come sleep in my bed,” Sloane said. “That’s all. Just sleep. I don’t want you alone on a night like this.”

Johnny didn’t want Sloane thinking he was some crybaby who couldn’t make it through a storm. “I don’t mind,” he said.

Sloane sat up, looked down at Johnny and rubbed a thumb over his lips. “I do.”

Johnny leaned his head over so he could rub his face against Sloane’s rough hand.

“Up,” Sloane said quietly. “Go on.”

Sloane’s bed looked like it could sleep five and have plenty of room left over. It was all black, four posters, maybe mahogany. Johnny was completely distracted by wrong angles that didn’t add up. “How did you get a bed like that in here?”

Turning toward Johnny, his eyes steady on him, Sloane said, “All the boys I brought up here, and none of them ever asked about the bed.”

Flushing deep red, Johnny mumbled, “I grew up seeing men build things.”

“Lie down,” Sloane said. “Get some rest.”

Johnny, in just pajama bottoms, lay down on the side of the bed farthest from the door, his back to the wall. Sloane left and went into what Johnny thought of as the Big Room, and then Johnny heard the sounds of something pouring.

By the time Sloane came back, the storm was raging through the night. The ceiling was just like the other bedroom, all glass. It glowed with lightning.

Sloane lay down on the far side of the bed, facing the door. Johnny watched him through slitted eyes, the curves of muscle on his body, the way he didn’t look scared, almost like a stormy night was nothing compared to what was on his mind.

Thunder clapped through the sky loud enough for Johnny to think the glass would crack for sure. He jumped a little, trying to act like he’d been sleeping.

In the dark, under the muttering thunder, Sloane said, “It’s just a storm. Not like we’ll blow away.”

“Seen whole houses get blown away,” Johnny said. “Where I come from, storms kill you.” He turned toward the wall, because what he
really
wanted was to be under the bed. But that was too embarrassing.

A while later, when lightning rippled across the sky, Johnny felt Sloane slide closer, felt his hard body against him. Johnny didn’t move, afraid that he’d fallen asleep and this was a dream. Sloane kissed the base of his neck. Lightning lit the room, showing Johnny their shadows flickering on the wall.

Sloane kissed down the middle of Johnny’s back, making him squirm and push back against him.

“If you want me to stop,” Sloane said, “tell me.”

The feel of Sloane’s lips, his soft breath on his spine, made Johnny shiver all over and made him forget the storm. But nothing could have made him not hear how Sloane’s voice sounded like a lie a man told himself. A man like Sloane took what he wanted, even if he didn’t think he would.

Johnny turned in Sloane’s arms, moving onto his back. Sloane’s lips covered his, making Johnny moan softly into his mouth.

Sloane rolled over on top of Johnny, holding his weight on his arms. He kissed Johnny’s neck and whispered in his ear, “I won’t hurt you.”

In freight cars Johnny had seen enough to know that Sloane was telling the truth. He wouldn’t hurt Johnny, as long as he didn’t say no. But that didn’t matter, because of all the words on earth that Johnny could think of, over the sound of his pounding heart, over the sound of rolling thunder, “no” was the last one that would have come out of his mouth. He slid his arms around Sloane, trailed his fingers down his back, and met Sloane’s eyes in the lightning.

“I never wanted it like I do with you,” Sloane said, and mashed his lips to Johnny’s and slid his tongue into his mouth, moaning softly. His hands slid down to Johnny’s pajama bottoms, slid them down, and cupped his ass, squeezing gently.

Johnny hissed in breath when Sloane’s fingers found his pulsing hole and rubbed slowly, making him shoot his hips up, grinding into Sloane’s hard cock.

“If I do this,” Sloane said, his lips against Johnny’s, “I won’t let you leave. You’ll be mine.”

In dark freight cars rolling across the country, lonely and scared, Johnny had dreamed of a man like Sloane, a man who could keep him safe. Looking out on the night lands rolling by, it hadn’t occurred to Johnny what kind of man he was dreaming of, that it would have to be a man with a wide, dark streak through his heart—a man like Sloane.

“I know,” Johnny whispered.

Sloane kissed down Johnny’s flat, quivering belly, stopped when he got to his hard cock, and rolled off the bed. He slid his pants down and drew Johnny to him with a crooked finger.

Lightning flashed and threw Sloane’s shadow up on the wall, a jagged outline of a man with muscled legs spread, hands hanging at his sides.

Johnny lay crosswise on the bed, his feet touching the wall, his head hanging over the edge of the mattress. He looked up at Sloane, who hesitated, but Johnny got impatient and licked the slick cock head hanging inches from his lips. Groaning, Sloane slid his cock into Johnny’s throat in one deep stroke.

Moaning, Johnny reached up to caress Sloane’s heavy balls, letting him stroke into his throat again and again. Johnny couldn’t get enough of Sloane in his throat. He loved feeling himself stuffed full of Sloane’s hard cock.

Sloane moaned and pulled out of Johnny’s mouth. “Spin around,” he said. “Put your feet on the edge.”

Johnny turned so his open legs were facing Sloane, eyes on the muscled body standing over him. Sloane took Johnny by the ankles and lifted his legs. When Sloane pressed his cock to Johnny’s ass, Johnny bit his lips at the feel of the thick cock head sliding into him. He winced at the pain, but Sloane bent over him and kissed him, flicking his nipples.