Infected: Lesser Evils (45 page)

The guys were mostly professional, the coach out on the ice and telling various players what he wanted out of them, what he needed them to do or not do, and among all his big, younger players, he stood out like a sore thumb. But he was their boss and they listened, although he had no suggestions for Tank, who shifted playing goal with Ethan, and even took shots at Ethan with a puck, occasionally using his big goalie stick to bounce the puck before batting it at him out of midair. Scott chided him for being a show-off, and when Jeff jokingly swerved to check Tank as if he were another player, Tank met him with his shoulder and sent him falling on his ass, much to the delight of a few other players watching the Tank show. In spite of the pregame air, they all seemed pretty relaxed and loose, and since Roan had found some pieces of wood in the empty corridor, he and Dylan drew up signs that they held up during set plays, making everyone laugh. (Dylan’s read 7.2, while Roan’s read 6.5.) Occasionally they’d switch signs, or hold them upside down. Grey, skating by, protested, “I did a lot fucking better than a six point five.” So Roan wrote on the back of the sign pi to four digits (3.1415), and held it up after he shot a few pucks at the net. Everyone else laughed, and Grey gave him the finger.

It was odd—it was always odd when he was with any of the Falcons—but it was fun. If anyone had ever asked him if he thought a bunch of macho het jocks would be so cool with them, Roan would have said no, but times were definitely changing. Of course, as Dylan would point out, he might be gay but he was still a fellow macho asshole, so at least they all had that in common.

They ended up behind the Falcons bench by the time the actual game started, watching the game at eye level, hearing all the trash talk and cringing as the guys threw themselves into other guys and the boards with careless abandon. Sometimes the crowd actually gasped, and the glass and the boards would shake as if in the middle of a minor earthquake. But every time both guys kept playing, reinforcing the idea that hockey players were all fucking nuts, and probably deserved their macho asshole reputation. (Although really, flinging yourself bodily at another man, no matter how hard you did it, seemed a little gay. Roan mostly kept that thought to himself, but he whispered it in Grey’s ear after he came off shift and sat on the bench, and Grey started laughing so hard he actually had tears in his eyes. He also had a hard time catching his breath, because most of the guys who came back to the bench were panting. Skating fast and flinging yourself at other guys was apparently quite a workout, and explained why, out of their padding and uniforms, most of these guys were as thin as reeds. And they sweated like fat guys in a superheated sauna.)

Dylan ended up spending most of the game sitting near Ethan, and they ended up hitting it off very well, talking about everything from vegetarian cooking (Ethan was a vegetarian—again, who knew?) to the songs of Elliott Smith. At one point, an annoyed player with the name Nilsson stitched on the back of his jersey turned and asked, “Do you guys ever shut up?”

“Nope,” Ethan answered happily, and went on talking.

There was no reason for Ethan to pay any attention. Tank’s final game was a total rout, the Falcons won it five to nothing, and while Tank made some spectacular saves (and got himself an assist on Scott’s second goal of the evening), none looked particularly challenging. There were a couple of interesting things that happened, though. A guy named Johnson kept staring at him, and Roan stared back at him until he apologized for being rude, but he’d never met a gay guy before. This led Jeff to sock him in the shoulder, hard enough to make him shout, “Ow!” and almost fall off the bench. Jeff told him not to be a little shit, but he protested he wasn’t, he just hadn’t met a real live gay guy before, and Roan couldn’t help but laugh. Were all straight guys this awkward? Man.

The second interesting thing happened in the middle of the third period, when a puck ricocheted off a stick and came flying toward the Falcons’ bench. The guys ducked out of the way, but Roan caught it before it could hit the glass behind him. The odd thing was, Roan had no intention of catching it; he made no decision to even try and get it, and yet the next thing he knew his left hand was stinging like it’d just been run over, and he had an ice-cold puck in his palm. He moved it to his right hand and shook out his left, wondering if he’d broken some bones (not that it was a problem), and wondering when his reflexes had developed a mind of their own. “Holy shit,” Johnson exclaimed, staring at him wide eyed.

“He’s gonna get your job, Hillie,” Richie said, referring to Ethan.

The trainer offered Roan an ice pack for his hand, which he declined, and when the other team called a time-out and Tank skated up to the bench, he lifted up his mask, grinning like a crazy person, and said, “We should add that catch to the highlight reel.” He wasn’t joking, so in a way Roan was glad Tank was going to Boston.

After the game, while the guys were showering and dressing and he and Dyl were loitering in one of the drafty, creepy corridors, Roan’s phone rang. If it was Rosenberg, Roan was going to let it go to his voice mail (damn it, he was having a nice, distracted evening with the Falcons, and he wasn’t going to let it get away from him now), but the phone showed it was Holden, so he answered it. “Yeah?”

“I might have something on the cat killer for you,” he said, with no preamble. Wherever he was, it was loud, and he was pretty sure he recognized the Murder City Devils playing in the background. “But you need to get down to the Dungeon. It’s fetish night, so flash your tats, you’ll get in free.” Before Roan could ask further questions, such as why Holden was at the Dungeon on fetish night, he’d hung up. Not that he’d be able to hear him very well over “Press Gang.”

Dylan was looking at him with a curiosity tempered with knowing wariness. “Something up?”

“Holden has something for me on another case. But he expects me to go to the Dungeon.”

Dylan knew exactly what that was, and raised his eyebrows. “The S&M club?”

“Apparently it’s fetish night. If I show my tattoos, I can get in for free.”

“Ooh, does that include me?” Grey asked, entering the hall. His hair was still wet but slicked back, and he’d changed into dark jeans and a black button-down shirt that made him look almost like a normal person. Except for the stuffed equipment bag slung over one shoulder, which was so full it looked ready to burst.

“You just won your game. Don’t you wanna go celebrate, have a beer or something? “

“Where we going?” Tank asked, joining him. Scott and Jeff soon followed, with Zack, Richie, and Ethan not far behind.

“You guys aren’t going,” Roan told them.

Grey ignored him, and told the guys, “A place called the Dungeon. Apparently it’s fetish night.”

“Fetish?” asked Jeff warily. “What kinda fetish?”

“Oh cool,” Tank exclaimed. “Fi’s told me all about the Dungeon.” Zack did a double take, but since he was standing behind and to the side of Tank, he didn’t notice.

“This is about a case I’m working,” he explained. “You’re not going with me.” But of course they were, and Roan knew it even as he insisted they weren’t.

Great. Now he was going to an S&M club with (mostly) straight hockey players to meet a hooker. It sounded like the setup to a porn film.

And come to think of it, it might be more enjoyable if it was.

Perpetual Bris

I
T
WAS
probably awful of Roan to hope that the guys got lost on the way to the club, but he still hoped anyways. It didn’t matter, because it never happened.

Ultimately, only Grey, Scott, Tank, Zack, and Ethan came, as Richie was a married man (really? He seemed too young for that) and his wife apparently wasn’t happy with his after-game carousing, and Jeff was too wary of a fetish night. (He said he used to live near the meatpacking district in New York City, as if that explained why he didn’t want to go to a fetish club. Maybe it did.) Still, Roan wasn’t looking forward to this.

Roan told Dylan about the cat killer case, and lied, saying he was looking into it for the police since no one in the Heights was going to talk to a cop, but they’d have no trouble talking to Holden and his friends. This lie was eminently plausible; so plausible, in fact, that Roan wondered why the cops hadn’t asked him to do this. Then again, he hadn’t exactly checked in with Chief Matthews yet, mainly because he was in no hurry to get chewed out by her. Now that he wasn’t an actual cop, he was in no rush to put up with all that bullshit.

Both he and Dylan held out hope that Zack and Ethan would be turned away at the door, as both were definitely too young to drink (legally, here—Canada was a different story), but that was shot to pieces as Fiona met them there, and at the Dungeon, she was minor royalty. It turned out she was watching the game from the stands, and Tank had called her to tell her where to meet them. She wasn’t allowed near the locker rooms since the “camera phone incident.” (No one elaborated, but Roan whispered if she had any photos she’d like to share. She gave him a cheerful thumbs up.)

Fi got them all in the club easily, even though the only leather she was currently wearing was a jacket. Ironically, they all had leather jackets, save for Dylan, who had a canvas one, and Ethan, who had a denim one. (Ethan was so corn-fed farm boy that it was kind of cute. Roan could totally see Dylan going for him, if Dylan were single and Ethan were gay.)

The club had that dark/bright dichotomy that he’d seen in many clubs, where the light was dim near the bar and near the tables, but was brightly lit by the back and in an area where it appeared hospital curtains were separating a section of the room from what passed for the dance floor. The lighting there was bright enough that you could see the shadows of people behind it, some holding drinks, and there were ominous shadows of some kind of device that could very well have been a dentist’s chair. As it was, the curtain was pulled back partway, and yes, it was a dentist’s chair, and there was something like a tattoo needle rig beside it. Roan could smell fresh blood in the club, beneath the smell of booze, sweat, amyl nitrate, and wet leather, but there was more sour pain in the blood than he would have expected from tattoos (unless the tattooist was truly horrible).

They went up to the bar, and the bartender, a large black bear with a gleaming bald scalp, wearing a black leather vest and a chin piercing, pointed a meaty finger at them all and said, “You guys are familiar looking, but you ain’t regulars. How do I know you?”

Roan had a smartass quip ready to go, but Fiona told him, “They’re part of the Falcons, and this is my boss, the guy who ends up in the papers for pissing people off. Dallas, this is Roan, that’s his husband Dylan, and this is Tank, Scott, Grey, Zack, and Ethan, the Falcons’ posse. Guys, this is Dallas.”

“The Atlanta Falcons?” he asked, obviously confused that there’d be so many skinny white guys on the team.

“The Seattle Falcons,” she replied. “The hockey team.”

“Oh,” Dallas said, like he knew who they were, even though it was fairly obvious he didn’t. “What’re your positions?”

The guys shared a glance, and it seemed obvious they were going to follow Scott’s lead. Rather than call him out on not knowing the team, Scott decided to just pretend he hadn’t noticed, which was smart of him. You never wanted to piss off your bartender. “I’m a center,” Scott offered.

“Defense,” Grey said.

“Goalie,” Tank said.

“Left wing and right wing,” Zack said. “Whatever the coach wants me to play.”

“Second goalie,” Ethan said.

“I just piss people off,” Roan added, not wanting to be left out.

“I tend bar over at Silver,” Dylan said.

Dallas gasped. “The rich people’s place? Dude, I hear they have a hundred-dollar burger in that joint.”

He shook his head. “It’s a hundred-dollar steak. They wouldn’t sully their menu with a burger.”

“Fuck me. So what’s this hundred-buck steak like?”

Dylan shrugged. “I’m vegetarian, I avoid the kitchen at all costs.”

He nodded as if that was wise, his chin stud catching the light like a mirror. “I used to work at the Blue Onion, and let me tell you, after seein’ what went on in that kitchen, I don’t eat out anymore, ’cept at places where I got a good view of the kitchen. So what can I set you guys up with?”

Grey, who being the tallest had the best vantage point, pointed at a board behind the bar, where the specials were written up in colored chalk, and some seemed to glow in the dim lighting. “What’s the absinthe special?”

Roan winced, and Scott said, “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“You get a price cut if two or more people order it at the same time,” Dallas said.

“Anyone wanna do it with me?” Grey wondered. “Roan?”

“Why are you lookin’ at me?” he replied, not sure if he should be offended or not. “I can’t do it, the smell of the stuff knocks me back like a sucker punch.” Which was absolutely true. Absinthe was far too strong for his heightened sense of smell; it was like taking a sledgehammer to the sinuses.

“I’ll do it,” Zack said cheerfully.

Dallas looked at him through squinted eyes. “How old are you?”

“Not old enough for absinthe,” Scott said for him. “Fine, I’ll try it.”

“Count me in,” Tank said. “Chère?”

Fiona shook her head. “Not my scene.”

“Umm, what’s it like?” Ethan wondered.

Scott patted him on the arm, like a parent soothing an upset kid. “If you have to ask, you aren’t ready for it. We’ll take the absinthe, but these two will take a couple of beers.” He indicated Zack and Ethan, and then looked at Roan and Dylan. “You guys want beer?”

Dylan shook his head. “I’d rather have a margarita.”

“Just give me a soda, anything with caffeine in it.” Roan was driving, and besides, he’d done enough drug mixing for one week.

The bartender nodded, and got the easy ones first, namely his Coke and the two beers. The margarita was next, and the absinthe was last.

There was a bit of a ritual with it. The little glasses were laid out, with a slotted spoon put over the top of each. Dallas brought out a sugar bowl from beneath the bar, where sugar cubes that reeked of the anise-scented absinthe sat, and with a tiny pair of tongs he put a cube on each slotted spoon. Then he retrieved a tiny blowtorch, of the kind you used to brown the crust of a crème brulee, and set the alcohol-soaked cubes on fire. He then dumped the cubes in the small glass of green-colored liquor, which caught on fire, burning with a small, almost perfectly translucent flame, before he doused it with a shot glass full of water. Only then was the absinthe ready to drink. As far as Roan was concerned, if a drink had that many steps involved, it wasn’t worth it.