No Rest for the Wicked (16 page)

“Step back from the stove,” he whispered after a minute. “Don't want anything to catch on fire.”

So, we made out against the kitchen wall for awhile. I'll admit I was a little more eager than usual. Reveling in the feel of his ass in my hands, the taste of his mouth. That sound he made when I grabbed his chin and turned it so I could deepen the kiss.

He made the sound again, but it sounded more like a pained grunt than like appreciation, and his fingers were on my face, pushing me back a bit. “I think you'd better eat something,” he said. I felt the pads of his fingers on my lips, my teeth. And I realized my lips were drawn back, exposing my canines. I dropped him so quickly he staggered. “Fuck. Fuck, I'm sorry, Peter.”

“It's not a problem. I'm hungry too.”

I snagged a bag and took it to the bathroom. When I came back, he was sitting down to his spaghetti, tossing cold pills back like they were raisins and washing them down with a glass of milk.

“So about the Lake case,” he said. “I think we can assume Suits was involved. And I think we can assume these people you initiated contact with yesterday are involved. Question is, who is at the center of it and how do we catch them?”

“Peter, you have got to be kidding me. What did Davis say?”

“It's no big deal. Just pending some shrink signing off on a psych eval. Nothing to stop me from asking a few questions.”

“Davis told you you could ask a few questions?”

“No. But he didn't say I couldn't.”

“Why does he want you to talk to the shrink?”

His stubby gold eyelashes flicked downward, and he frowned at the toast he was buttering.

“Some hogwash about Stan's death. And yours.”

I liked to avoid conversations that traversed the terrain of my death. “I thought you got signed off a year ago with the department shrink.”

“Yeah.” Now he seemed to be really,
really
fascinated by the toast he was buttering, the knife smoothing yellow into every corner and niche.

“Peter, if you're crazy, then nobody in this city is sane. What's the problem?”

“I punch one damned hole in one damned wall and suddenly I've got a damned twenty-four-year-old doctor with a bug up his ass about posttraumatic stress.” Peter shrugged and ate the toast in three bites.

Peter had made his opinion of PTSD clear to me already. Who, he reasoned, had watched SI scrape a kid off the pavement and been the same afterward? What kind of man wouldn't be traumatized by what LAPD officers did every day? Maybe a monster like yours truly could calmly step over all those innocent bodies, but men like Peter had nightmares. And they drank.

And sometimes they put their fists through walls. It was a sign of their humanity, not a disorder.

So I withheld comment and watched as Peter applied himself to his meal without further conversation. For dessert, I pushed him against a wall and ground against him awhile and then, later, I had to dig my fingers into his recliner's Ultrasuede armrests while he deep throated me so hard I'd swear the top of my head popped off.

Then the bell to the condo rang.

“Cover yourself,” he said as he went to answer the intercom.

The way he leered at me when he said it made me feel disinclined to do anything of the sort, but I obediently snagged a pillow and covered my groin so that when Nancy entered all she saw was yours truly, with his pants around his ankles, spread out in the La-Z-Boy, holding a pillow to his crotch.

“Were you always like this?” was all she said, dropping two cell phones on the table.

“Richardson said your contact list is an
America's Most Wanted
roster.”

“Thanks.”

She threw herself, uninvited, onto Peter's couch. “My ass has been through the meat grinder. Tell me you found something worthwhile.”

“We were just talking about it,” said Peter.

Nancy's eyes rested on my pillow. “Obviously.”

“Here.” Peter dumped a throw on me, and I wrapped it all around myself and got my act together.

“Prelim on Suits puts TOD during the rave downstairs,” said Nancy. Her flat, cynical gaze rested on me.

“We saw two bloodsuckers at the party,” I told her, zipping my pants. “I'd put my money on a tall blond dude, calls himself Nicolas.”

“I followed your suggestion and requested DNA samples from the neck wounds,” Nancy told Peter. “Richardson had something to say about that, believe me.”

“They don't believe?”

“They didn't actually see anything, did they? Everything else they chalk up to an elaborate fabrication on my part.” She jerked her chin at me. “Tell me about this place you followed this Drew to.”

“There's definitely a gang of them down there,” I told her. “We had to get out before dawn, so I haven't had a chance to debrief him, but Drew will have more information.”

Peter had gone to his liquor cabinet and brought down the seldom-opened bourbon. He poured Nancy a shot and handed it to her. She took it gratefully and tossed it back in one go that barely seemed to faze her, then held the glass up to him. “More, please. That young man is quite a resource.”

Peter poured and said to her, “I'd prefer that we keep him out of it. I don't want to risk any more citizens. That homicide is on my head. I should have realized it was possible and covered that contingency.”

I'd almost forgotten Caballo's admission of guilt. But all I said was, “Drew's into it. Let me call him.” While I dialed, Peter brought out two more shot glasses. The geek wasn't answering, though. “Call me when you've got a minute,” I told his voice mail. “I want to talk about what you saw down there.” I took the drink from Peter. “You sure you want to drink on top of all those cold capsules you've been popping?”

He shook his head. “My mother swore by a hot toddy for a cold.”

Nancy was staring miserably into the glass like she could read her own humiliating future in it. “I'll never hear the end of this,” she said. “Richardson and Selkey had the guys in tears

when I came out of the bureau chief's office.” She held up the glass, and Peter poured another generous shot into it.

“Too bad I didn't know,” I said to her. “I'd have made them stop laughing.”

“No, you wouldn't,” said Peter sternly. “Listen, while Davis was spitting fire, I heard a piece of news from one of the grunts on the floor. He told me the ME issued her official findings on Lake. Turns out Lake had stage-three lymphoma.”

“He really did have cancer?” said Nancy.

Peter swished the bourbon in his glass thoughtfully. “They were keeping it a secret. He was the company's only asset, really. His big brain. There's a huge financial prize awarded every year. Seems like they thought it wouldn't be given to them if the word got out he was terminal.”

“So that's why he was revisiting his will.”

“That's the thing. He never made it to the appointment with his lawyer. And two days later he's got a new girlfriend and he's going to raves.”

“One last hurrah before he died,” suggested Nancy. She'd taken the bottle from Peter and was pouring into the glass and drinking so quickly she might as well have drunk straight from the bottle.

“So Suits knew Lake was dying. But he didn't expect him to change his will.”

“Nope.” Peter sat down, rolling his empty shot glass between the palms of his hands. “But the Internet is buzzing, apparently, because before Suits died, he offered a two-million-dollar reward for the location of the code. Your people,” he said to Nancy, “are pointing the finger at Davis.” Peter took the bottle from Nancy and poured himself another shot.

I saw where this was going. “And Davis is pointing at you?”

“Something like that.”

Nancy seemed to be melting into the couch. She lay her head down on one arm and closed her eyes.

“Maybe we should call her a cab,” I suggested.

“Let her sleep.” Peter picked up the throw he had tossed me and laid it over Nancy, who was now snoring. He tucked it under her feet. “I feel sorry for her,” he said.

“So what's next?” I asked, following him into his bedroom.

“I need to shut my eyes for a couple of hours,” he said, removing his watch, then placing it in the dish he kept on his dresser. I've known Peter for over a decade, and he always takes off his watch and puts it in the dish. Right side up, face pointing toward him.

Peter always unbuttons the cuffs of his sleeves first, and then he always bats my hands away when I try to help him take off his shirt.

He let me feel him up a little before he wriggled out from my grasp and went down to the bathroom.

By the time he came back to the room, I'd stripped and was posed on the bed, priming the proverbial pump.

He grinned. “Wish I had a camera.”

“It wouldn't work.” I fondled my balls, watching his eyes darken as I did so.

“Guess I'll just have to memorize how you look.”

He climbed onto the bed, and I grabbed him before his ass had hit the sheets.

His mouth tasted minty fresh when I stuck my tongue down his throat, but he pushed me back, grinning and scandalized. “We can't. Nancy's in the next room.”

“She's practically in a coma,” I said, sliding my hand down his belly and wiggling my fingers under the waistband of his boxers.

He captured my wrist, though I saw the wriggle of his hips and the beginnings of growth in the boxers. “It's like having sex in my mother's house,” he whispered.

“You telling me you never did that?” I let my hand slide slowly down one leg of the boxers, tickling the curling hairs on his thigh and slipping fingers up under the short edge.

Another wriggle of his hips and he was smiling at me.

“Of course not.”

“No high school hotties spending the night? Sharing a sleeping bag in a tent in the yard?” I whispered against his ear. I slid my hand down, and this time he didn't fight me when I slid the boxers down.

I closed my mouth over his and felt the little sound he made when I closed my hand over his cock.

He put my hand on his where I'd loosely wrapped my fingers around him. I could feel him, warm and swelling slowly into my palm. Then thickening quickly. His fingers tightened around mine and helped me grip his cock. His chin tilted up, eyes dark beneath nearly closed lids.

I rolled on top of him, giving up my hand to rub my belly against him, then my cock. His hand and mine slid between us as we helped each other get off. Holding him, not sure if I held him or myself, our combined friction and all-over feeling of goodness. His lips were soft and wet, and he pushed up against me hungrily, hips moving beneath mine. One leg came around and locked itself to my leg, and then I felt his hand on the back of my head and he was kissing me hard, teeth catching against my lips.

He gasped, head back, and I felt an orgasm tickle and then crawl in a thousand tiny rivulets from my balls to my brain.

“Christ,” I breathed against his neck.

He was still breathing hard. “Yeah.”

“Nobody does frottage like you.”

A gruff laugh. “Find a Hallmark card with
that
on it.”

I pushed up onto my elbows, looking down at him, liking the feel of him warm and fitting snugly up against me inch for inch and skin to skin.

“Hey, you've got blood on you,” I observed.

“Do I?” He ran his tongue around until he found the little blob on his upper lip. “Did I bite you? I'm sorry.”

“You wouldn't be the first.” It was a lame joke, but it made him smile.

He reached up, one finger on my face with that indescribable gentleness that always took me unaware. “It's okay, isn't it, Adam?”

“Sure.” His finger had found my mouth, and I kissed it softly. I watched his eyelids slowly close and listened to his whistling breaths as he fell asleep. I rolled over next to him then, watching him as he breathed, the vein beating softly in his throat until the rhythm of it hypnotized me and I sank into the coma I call sleep.

Sometime later I half woke up to feel Peter's hand in my hair and his lips on my forehead.

It was the sort of kiss a mother gives an ill child, and I kept my eyes closed so as not to surprise him in it.

“Going to make a few calls,” he whispered. I turned over, curled on my side, and dozed again.

When I woke again, the mattress next to me was cold. I stumbled from the bed and went straight to the refrigerator where I found a note taped to the blood bag there.

E. Guadalupe called with info. Will be in touch later. P

I swore mildly. The clock on the microwave reported the time to be three p.m. I was stuck in the condo for at least a few more hours.

I dialed Drew's number again. “It's me,” I said. “Did you ever check out the chick in Echo Park? Call me.” I disconnected and my phone rang almost immediately.

“Drew?”

“No,” said Betsy. “Drew isn't here. I haven't seen him since he rode off on your bike last night.”

“I left him at headquarters,” I said. “I dropped him out front twenty minutes before dawn.”

“I'm there, Adam. He isn't. Did you see him walk inside?”

“No, I was in a hurry.”

“Well, he isn't here, and he isn't answering his phone.” Her voice was rising.

“He's probably at his loft.”

“He gave up the lease months ago,” said Betsy, voice gaining in hysteria. “I think something's happened to him.”

“He probably just decided to sleep somewhere else,” I told her.

“Why? Why would he do that?”

“Maybe he got tired of listening to you and Caballo knocking boots all night,” I suggested.

That silenced her for a moment.

“You're an asshole,” she said. And disconnected.

“Damned straight,” I said and tossed the phone down, feeling uncomfortably like a dick.

“For a minute there I thought I was dreaming about my ex,” said Nancy. She stood in the kitchen doorway with her hair down and the throw wrapped around her, a good four inches shorter without the heels she always wore, her face puffy and worn and her hair hanging down in tangled lumps. Her red eyes scanned me up and down, and I realized I was standing in the kitchen with a blood bag in one hand, a note in the other. Otherwise, stark naked.