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There was no one in the world I wanted to see less than Frank Mackey.
He was slumped over a beer, head almost touching the rim of the glass. I thought about turning on my heel and leaving, right then, before he could notice me, but one thing I’ll never deny Mackey is that he’s got his finger on the pulse. He looked up, gaze snapping to mine like a magnet.
“Scorcher,” he said. “Long time no see.”
There was nothing for it. I could have turned around and walked out, but no matter what had happened since I’d last seen Mackey, that was letting him win.
I nodded to him.
“Mackey.”
I took the seat to his left and ordered whiskey, neat. The bartender slid it across the bar with an interested look. I came here after work every Friday and hadn’t said a word beyond small talk to anyone. Usually didn’t go for whiskey, either. I took a long drink of it, letting it roll around on my tongue before swallowing it down. It was mid-tier stuff at best, but I wasn’t going to be picky, especially not on my salary.
I stared straight ahead, letting him make the opening move. Mackey was impatient, erratic. Had been since our academy days. It made it easy, waiting him out.
He eyed me and took a sip of his beer.
“Heard you quit.”
Too casual. It was the biggest gossip of the year. O’Kelly had tried more than a few times to make me stay, but it was a charade and we both knew it: the polite back and forth only in service of my 86 percent. I itched the last months on the Squad, the badge a cheap costume, and everybody knew it: even the floaters and the perps were giving me sympathetic glances, like they’d just passed around a Get Well Soon card to sign and everyone knew I wasn’t making it. And then it was eight years over and done, like it had never even happened. Dina had called it a good thing, had hugged me ‘round the neck and said I could get a real job, something like hers, where she did actual work. She didn’t care much for making sandwiches, she said, but it was something real, something that fed people. And if you needed another job there was a Subway three doors down and a Quiznos, besides.
I couldn’t tell her that the only thing left in my life that was real was the animal thrill you get when you take down some pervert, when you narrow in on some real freak ruining people’s lives and take them down. It would have scared her, and it was gone for me, forever, besides. But my silence bored her. She’d disappeared and left me alone, saying at least I wasn’t a frigid bitch like Geri but I was even less fun. She was back five days after that, soaked from the rain and swearing she didn’t mean it, and I’d kept her entertained somehow ‘til she had her head again, filling out job applications when she wasn’t looking.
Saying I didn’t want to talk about it would be like dripping red meat for Mackey but so would an evasion; in the end I just shrugged.
“I did.”
He nodded, slow, fingers drumming on the sticky bar.
“Here every week?”
I shrugged one shoulder. “Looking for an alibi?”
Mackey laughed, loud and sharp. It startled me, though I was still good enough at not reacting that I don’t think he noticed.
“Nah, fuck,” he said. “Wouldn’t get me near the Murder boys.” He raised his glass, winked. “Present company excluded.”
I wasn’t, and a while ago I might’ve rolled my eyes or given him some cheek about Undercover, but it also wasn’t my job to defend anymore. I took another long swallow. I wondered if seeing me like this was doing anything for Mackey or if he wished he’d never run into me either.
“Is this your neighborhood?”
I had another swallow or two left before the glass would be empty and I could leave without it being an obvious rush. I picked it up and tilted it back and forth, just for something to do.
“Close enough.”
“It’s nice,” Mackey said, which was a lie. It was an old neighborhood filling up with flats renovated and split in half and rented on the cheap to artsy young college students who gave me a wide berth on the sidewalk.
I let that hang there for a moment and then gestured to him with my glass. “You?”
“Ah,” Mackey said. “No. Kevin.”
I took a sip of whiskey.
“The anniversary?”
“Yeah.” Mackey finished his beer in one long drink. Why was he here and not in Faithful Place? But then I didn’t care overmuch as long as he’d picked this place at random.
“Sorry, old son.”
Mackey grunted. “You have siblings?”
I didn’t want to talk about Dina. I grunted back. “Sisters.”
Mackey ran a finger over the rim of his glass. He looked up at me, sudden, and grinned. It was a horrible smile, like someone had ripped his face open and bared his teeth for him. Jenny Spain’s face flashed before my eyes, and I closed them, took a drink of my whiskey.
“Me too. I used to have brothers,” he said. He laughed and rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. He must have already been a few beers in. “You’re not on Murder anymore. It doesn’t fucking matter what I tell you. D’you know, that night, he tried to call me? And I didn’t answer?”
I didn’t want to have this conversation. It would be rude to leave now. But I was close to doing it, to throwing my half-full glass at Mackey’s head just to make him stop talking.
“I don’t think I did,” I said neutrally. The things Mackey didn’t tell me on that case were enough to almost lose me my badge. But I didn’t want to think about that either.
“Yeah,” Mackey said, and snorted. “A suicide.”
“Yes,” I said. “If it had been, you’d have caused it.”
Something flashed across his face. Maybe anger.
“Real nice, Scorch.”
I shrugged.
“I would’ve picked up.”
Mackey had a strange look in his eye. I couldn’t tell what it meant that he hadn’t hit me yet. I took another drink.
“You’re a sad son of a bitch these days,” he said, finally.
I snorted. “Not like you haven’t thought I was one all along.”
“Son of a bitch, yes. Sad? Kicked puppy?” Mackey shook his head, a crack-thin smile on his face. “Thought the last thing to go would be your pride.”
I set the glass down on the bar, hard, and pulled out enough to cover my drink. Then I stood, almost knocking my stool over.
“Thought we were getting along, Scorchie!” Mackey said. His smile broadened, like I’d told a joke.
“Mackey,” I said, just this side of cordial, and turned to leave.
I made it all the way outside and two steps closer to my building when I felt someone tug at my sleeve.
“What’s your problem, Scorch? Can’t take a joke?” In the streetlights Frank’s eyes were electric blue, like cheap kid’s candy or a neon sign. The sort of color that’s so artificial it can’t even pretend otherwise. I couldn’t tell if he was really just pissed all to hell or getting off on fucking with me. Either way, I wasn’t in the fucking mood.
“My problem,” I said, “is that you caused your brother’s death, and you don’t even feel bad about it.”
He looked up at me, wide-eyed. I thought that landed; there was a millisecond of a pause before his face cracked down the middle into a laugh.
“There he is!” He took a step forward and stumbled. Frank slumped against me, hands pressed to my chest. I was embarrassed by the quick flash of fear. Then it turned into sharp, overwhelming annoyance, with him, with me, with everything but my cool, dark apartment. I shoved him back, hard enough that he raised his hands in supplication.
“Easy,” he said, looking up at me through his lashes, like he was on a third date. “The rough stuff turn you on?”
“I’m not gay,” I said, and straightened my shoulders. Looked down at him with the little bit of height I have on Frank. He laughed, swaying a little closer again.
“Who’s saying you’re gay?” Frank said. His hair touched my cheek; it was as soft as a girl’s. “Hands’re the same. So are the holes,” he said, and laughed again. “Or close enough.”
“It’s not...”
“Aww, don’t even know the right word for fags these days,” Frank said. “I didn’t take you for a fancy Catholic school type. Didya know my ex-wife went? Would’ve been too good for your striving arse, too, but maybe she would’ve hid it better.”
I slapped him, hard. He didn’t even seem to feel it, still laughing.
“You’re drunk.” My hand was still on his shoulder, keeping him upright.
“So’re you.”
“Not as drunk,” I said, though the easy sprawl of his body didn’t match the watchfulness in his eyes. Maybe I was drunker than I thought, to be out here with him at all. And to let him, when he reached for the zipper on my trousers and took my cock in his hand.
“You going to win at this too, Scorchie?” Frank said, right in my ear. I suppressed a shiver. He drew back a little, keeping his maddeningly slow pace. “I don’t think so,” he said, conversational. “I don’t think you’ve been touched in a long time.”
The women since Laura flashed through my head: pretty, made-up baubles that laughed at the right times and curled their hair, but nothing was as sweet with them as it was with her, and I stopped trying. After everything, Geri tried to set me up with one of her friends—you’re lonely, Mick—but I’d stopped talking to her about anything but Dina until she dropped it.
I couldn’t offer a woman anything, now, not even a policeman’s salary and the respectability of a chief’s wife. Not children. So I didn’t try to.
“And you? Heard things went south again with Olivia.”
Frank sucked a breath in through his teeth and actually grinned at me, like he was impressed.
“Scorcher! Didn’t know you had it in you, and with your cock in my hand!”
“Don’t say it so loud,” I hissed, and leaned my head back against the cold, rough brick. Frank stepped even closer, his wrist at a wrenching angle, but he kept his pace.
“Yeah,” he said, finally. “I’m not the sort of guy you marry.”
“Me neither,” I said, ragged.
“Really?” An eyebrow raised. “No new Mrs. Kennedy?”
“No,” I forced out, and ducked my head in an aborted motion. “Will you just—”
“Scorcher Kennedy,” he said. “Are you trying to kiss me?”
He was grinning again, from ear to ear, and the smartest thing to do would have been to walk away now, right after walking away when I first saw his sorry head bent over his beer. But he was right, I hadn’t been touched in a long time. And Frank didn’t know a damn thing about me no matter what he said, but he saw the shape of the dark animal inside me, and that night, that was enough.
“Shut up, shut up,” I said, and kissed him. Nothing like how I would have kissed Laura. The smell of her hair curler lingering, just on the edge of burnt. Her lipstick smearing, her laugh as she wiped it off me. With Frank it was teeth and the taste of cheap beer. Yesterday’s shave job growing into patchy stubble.
Frank kissed like he talked, overbearing and cheeky. I put my hand in his hair and held him in place to get a better angle and he bit my lips hard enough to draw blood.
“You know there are easier ways to keep me quiet,” he said into my mouth, and for a moment I pictured it. Shoving Frank to his knees, pushing my cock past that easy, simpering smirk. It was too easy, and Frank was asking for it, so I just put a hand on his hip and held him upright.
Somewhere along the way, he’d forgotten his game, or else found a new one, because his hand on my cock sped up, slicking the whole thing with my precum. I came before I knew I was going to, and bit down on my tongue to stop from crying out. There was come on my shirt, but mostly on Frank’s hand, which he wiped on his own shirt, unbothered.
“Not going to do me?” Frank said. He leaned back against the wall like he’d just been lounging here. His blue eyes sparked; his lips were red and clothes ruffled. He looked well-fucked. My eyes lingered on him a little, something I’d never felt with a man before or since. There was something in me that night that remembered being a predator.
In a rush I was on him, undoing his jeans and shoving my hand down them. Frank gasped and cracked his head back into the brick wall when I got ahold of him. I crowded him, not stopping, hand tight around his cock, nose pressed into his neck like a lover’s.
There was something feral about me, with Frank’s warm, velvet-skinned cock in my hand. I could have torn it to pieces. I squeezed him too tight but he only moaned, pried my hand off of him and licked it base to tip, eyes half lidded and still sharp as razor wire. He held the back of it, laced his fingers through, and brought the both of them down again to snap his hips into.
I jerked him off fast and didn’t bother doing anything differently when his cock throbbed in my hand, warning. It didn’t matter. He came, and I dropped his cock like it was a hot poker.
Mackey smiled at me, his t-shirt splattered with come, and I remembered abruptly that Mackey doesn’t walk into games he can’t win. The thing that had been here with us was gone. I wiped my hand on the brick, then on my cheap khakis, and buttoned my pants.
“I never want to see you here again.” The blood was rushing in my ears so loudly that I don’t know how it came out. It must have been pitiful, though, because Mackey just stuck his hands in his pockets and shrugged.
“D’you ever think about that night we pretended to be Russian millionaires to fuck with those kids?” I didn’t, but remembering it now made me think of how miserable I’d been then, cutting Laura loose from all my fuckups. Seeing Frank Mackey then had reminded me that I was still smart, and young, and fast. Giving Laura up was the noble thing to do, and that was what I did every day: the right thing, the just thing, the thing that would keep people like Laura and her pretty friends safe. Now it just reminded me of how much I’d failed.
“Do you ever think about how you almost fucked my whole career up?” That, I knew, came out like an aching wound.
“Hmm. I think you managed that one on your own, mate.” Frank had already started walking away. Over his shoulder, he said, “See you around, Mick.”
I stood there until the urge to shatter my hand on the brick passed. The bar was still open, but I had embarrassed myself enough tonight. I wouldn’t be coming back here, either.
My dark apartment was just how I’d left it: no Dina, no wife to put on music and pour red wine. It was the same floor plan halfway down the block. There was nothing here with the flash of Mackey’s eyes.
The weekend stretched before me, grey and featureless. I got into bed. I turned off the lights.