Indirection, page 4
part #1 of Borealis: Without a Compass Series
“How the hell am I supposed to understand, North? I can’t believe you’ve been keeping this from me.”
“Shaw—”
“How long?”
“I didn’t want you—”
“How long?”
“Right after the verdict. He didn’t make a thing of it. He just made sure I knew. Then, after everything that happened last year with the Slasher, he brought it up again. It’s something to do with your dad’s business and…” North stopped. He couldn’t bring himself to meet Shaw’s eyes.
“This is about working for my dad, and you still didn’t tell me?”
“I told him no. I told him I wouldn’t help him.”
Shaw’s breathing was shallow and rapid. He took a step back. “I need to take a walk.”
“Shaw, come on. I told him no.”
Shaking his head, Shaw left.
Chapter 5
FOR THE REST OF Wednesday, no matter how hard North tried, he couldn’t get Shaw to talk to him. The closest he got was a curt conversation when North was in the process of tracking Leslie Hawkins’s Facebook presence. The banned convention-goer had her personal account locked down, but she had posted publicly on Yasmin’s Facebook page about her plans to crash the con. When North had relayed this information, Shaw replied in short, brittle phrases, agreeing to visit the con the next day in hopes of either tracking down Leslie or getting a lead on where she was staying. After that, North got nothing until a brusque goodnight when Shaw went upstairs at the end of the day. North drove home, played with the puppy, and drank four Schlaflys. He went to sleep and woke at three in the morning with a roaring headache.
On Thursday, North picked Shaw up in his 1968 Pontiac GTO, original Springmist Green, even though Shaw’s Mercedes would probably have been more practical in the cold. Shaw was wearing a shearling coat, a tank top that said My other tank top is ironic, his Lulu-fucking-lemon yoga pants, and bright pink Nikes. He was also carrying approximately eighteen bags that looked like they were full of books.
“Are you doing a one-man bookmobile operation?”
Instead of answering, Shaw got extremely busy rearranging the bags.
“It was just a joke,” North said.
Shaw started rooting through one of the jumbled collections of books.
“All right,” North said, sighing as he shifted into gear. “You’re still mad at me.”
The Queer Expectations Convention was being held downtown at the Royal Excalibur, one of the grand old dames of St. Louis and one of the few remaining independent hotels. In keeping with its name, its décor featured knights and princesses, everything pseudo-medieval, pseudo-European, and pseudo-Arthurian, although North spotted a range of anachronisms, including a replica tapestry featuring an Elizabethan ruff that King Arthur, mythological or not, sure as fuck had never worn.
The Excalibur’s lobby was a cavernous room with crystal electroliers, gilding on the molding and column capitals, and a mural on the ceiling depicting a very twinkish King Arthur receiving Excalibur from a very butch Lady of the Lake. Thick red carpet had probably been intended to muffle sound, but the room still echoed with excited voices, laughter, and occasional screams. Several hundred people milled in the lobby; North guessed that ninety percent were women. The scene in front of him was pure chaos. A man was waving flyers, shouting at passersby about his latest circumcision-torture slow burn novel. A woman was trying to lasso another woman with a feather boa. An extremely young man was trying out a new shade of blush, pursing his lips and hollowing his cheeks as he turned his face to be inspected by three women who might have been sisters. A woman at North’s elbow burst out laughing at something she had seen on her phone; she threw her head back, clutching at a hat that looked like it was made out of foam penises to keep it from falling off her head. Every available inch of remaining space seemed to have been given over to promoting an author named Scotty Carlson—posters, banners, flyers, even drink coasters.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” North said. “How in the hell are we supposed to find her in this ocean of crazy?”
“Let’s start by finding Yasmin,” Shaw said, and then he plunged into the maelstrom of bodies.
The third time North had to stop and wait while Shaw adjusted the eighteen bags he was carrying, North growled and snatched half the bags, tearing them away from a protesting Shaw.
“Enough,” North said, holding up a finger to forestall more objections. “You can be mad at me. You can ignore me. You can refuse to talk to me. But I will be fucked on a ten-foot pole before you make me look like a bad boyfriend.”
Shaw blinked several times. “What?”
“What in the goddamn world is all this shit?” North rifled through one of the bags and came up with a sheaf of wadded pages.
“No, put that back, that’s—”
“Is this your library porn?”
“North, put that—”
“‘His dominating, engorged, throbbing overdueness filled my book return chute. He yanked my head back, baring my neck so that he could stamp it LATE with his teeth.’ Pages and pages of this, huh? Does this poor guy ever—oh, all over ‘the inflamed rim of my night depository.’ Good for him. Well, at least you seem to have learned how to use commas.”
“You can’t sex-shame me. We’re sex positive.” Shaw seemed to struggle for words and settled on, “You can’t.”
“I’m not sex-shaming you.”
“Oh.”
“I’m comma-shaming you. Well, retroactively, because this all looks fine. Your diction, on the other hand—”
Shaw snatched the crumpled papers and shoved them into one of his own bags.
“Since you’re talking to me, even if it’s only until you remember how mad you are, can I just tell you that the book thing is genius?”
Adjusting one of the bags that had slipped down his arm, Shaw gave North a wary look.
“I’m serious. For about five seconds after I saw all these bags, I wondered if you’d lost your goddamn mind. Then I realized there’s probably not a better way to blend in at a book con than to be overloaded with books.”
“And swag,” Shaw said, his eyes meeting North’s for a moment before sliding away. “Nobody’s going to look twice at us if we’re carrying bags of books and swag.”
“Genius.”
Shaw cleared his throat. “I did, um, bring half of these for you.”
“That was really thoughtful of you.”
Shaw put his hands on his hips and looked out over the crowd.
“Especially for someone who’s so angry at me that he can’t say two words to me, not even good morning.”
“Good morning,” Shaw mumbled. His face colored, and his eyes slid back to North. “I’m not very good at being angry with you.”
“Thank God. Even this bad version is really, really fucking upsetting.” North cleared his throat. “Shaw, I’m sorry. I will say it as many times as I need to. I know I screwed up, and I promise it won’t happen again.”
“We’re best friends.”
North nodded.
“We’re more than best friends,” Shaw said. “I love you more than anyone, and I can’t believe you’d keep something like that from me. Especially when it affects me and my family. We’ve got to trust each other—”
“One hour.”
Shaw narrowed his eyes.
“I will talk about this with you for one full hour,” North said, “at the time and place of your choosing. We can talk about every feeling we each had about it. We can talk about what I was thinking and why I made such a bad choice. I’ll tell you all about how scared I was, and how I locked this away instead of dealing with it. We’ll spend a full, solid hour processing it together. That’s my offer, if you’ll please forgive me.”
“Eight hours,” Shaw said. “At a spa. And you have to get a pedicure.”
“An hour and a half, at Dave and Buster’s, you pay for the tokens.”
“Four hours, in a sensory deprivation tank, and we try ayahuasca.”
“Two hours, I do a whole yoga thing with you, and you can light that fuck-awful incense.”
“The yoga time doesn’t count against the two hours. I want the full two hours to be talking. And processing. God, North, we have so much to process about this.”
North fought the urge to close his eyes. After a moment, he nodded. Shaw stretched up to peck him on the lips.
“Oh my God! They kissed!” It was the woman in the penis hat, and she was turning her phone toward them. “You guys, they kissed! Do it again!”
“Sweet Jesus,” North said, shrugging the bags back up his shoulder. “Let’s find Yasmin so we can do this job and get the fuck out of here.”
Across the Excalibur’s lobby, a registration area was made up of several folding tables labeled with letters of the alphabet. North and Shaw made their way to where Yasmin was seated at one of the tables. Today, she was wearing a sweatshirt with holes at the collar and cuffs; it displayed a monster-truck tire and the words Your axle goes here and then an excessively enthusiastic arrow.
“Oh my God,” Shaw said, stopping and standing on tiptoe. “It’s Scotty Carlson. North, it’s Scotty Carlson.”
“Great. That’s fucking great,” North said, stopping as a procession of women passed him, each one holding up an illuminated pair of silicone butt cheeks and a hole that had been totally destroyed. They were screaming with laughter.
“I’m just going to see if I can get him to autograph—” Shaw pawed at the bags he still carried. “This one.”
“Which one?”
“This bag. All of these. They’re all his.”
“Jesus. Fucking. Christ. You read this shit?”
“Um, of course. Where did you think I’d gotten all the books?”
North didn’t answer.
“Did you think there was some sort of book-themed spy-gear shop?”
It took North a moment too long. “No.”
“Oh my God.”
“I just—you’re changing the subject.”
“I’ll be really fast, North. He’s my favorite. He’s the best. And he and his husband are so sweet. They do all this charity work, and they post these incredible after-workout—” Shaw cut off so suddenly that he actually made a gulping noise.
North waited.
“After-workout shake recipes,” Shaw finally finished.
“This is actually too sad to watch. Go find your big-boy crush and get him to sign your books.”
“He’s not my—”
But North just gave him a tiny shove, and Shaw stumbled off toward the far end of the lobby. An attractive young man, probably close to North and Shaw’s age, was holding court. North assumed he was Scotty, and he was reading something out of a book to his admiring audience. An even hotter guy stood to the side and back, in a position North recognized (from all his years going to Tucker’s work events) as that of the supporting spouse. The audience was hanging on Scotty’s words, bursting into uproarious laughter every few moments. A guy with a very expensive-looking camera was photographing the whole thing.
“Lars?”
It wasn’t until North turned around that he realized that he was being addressed. A young man, heavyset and sweating under a rainbow sweater, was staring at him.
“Oh my God, that is a perfect Lars.”
“What the fuck is a Lars?” North growled, pushing past the kid as he headed toward the registration tables.
Yasmin was red eyed and twitchy and looked ready to kill for a smoke. She brightened when she spotted North, though, waving him to her end of the row of tables.
“You made it! This is fantastic. Heidi, isn’t this fantastic?”
The question was addressed to a black woman who was probably in her early thirties, her ash-blond hair done in an intricate crown of braids. She grinned at North. “A celebrity gay detective. Scotty better watch out, or this crowd might find someone more interesting than him.”
“God,” Yasmin said, “Don’t even say that out loud. Scotty will have an aneurysm, and I’ll be the one who has to talk him down. North, this is Heidi. Heidi, North McKinney.”
They exchanged pleasantries, and then North said, “Leslie posted on your Facebook page that she plans on crashing the con. I find it interesting that you didn’t mention that to us.”
Dropping her gaze, Yasmin shuffled papers in front of her.
“If she’s here,” North said, “I’d like to find her and ask her some questions, but the first step is a photograph so I know what the woman looks like.”
Yasmin had the decency to blush. “Your assistant did ask for one, but I got busy.”
“Listen, you’re the client. If you don’t want me looking for her—”
“I do.” Yasmin shot him a glare. “I wouldn’t be paying you if I didn’t. I told you: I just got busy.”
“Then I need some recent photos.”
After a moment, Yasmin nodded.
“And I want to talk to hotel security. Then I thought I’d take a look around the property. If she’s got any friends I can talk to—”
Yasmin waved a hand. “I can do better than all that. Several people have already told me they’ve seen Leslie here. She’s around somewhere. I want you to find her, and then I want her arrested for trespassing.”
Heidi’s lips thinned, but she didn’t say anything.
“I saw Clarence and the whole gang near the restaurant,” Yasmin said. “Could you introduce North so he can talk to them? They’re Leslie’s friends; maybe you can get something useful out of them.”
“About those pictures,” North said.
“I’ll get some for you. And I’ll give them to security too; that was a good idea.”
“It’s what you’re paying me for.”
Yasmin looked like she might respond, but a woman rushed up, babbling something about the diaper mountain, and Yasmin’s face spasmed in horror.
“Come on,” Heidi said with a quiet laugh. “Before we get roped in.”
“Did I hear diapers?”
Heidi nodded but didn’t offer any explanation as she led him down a hallway, leaving the lobby behind them. The crowd thinned out considerably as they went, which meant that the volume of ambient noise dropped as well. The molding and pilasters and gold-leaf flossing continued here, although more subdued. Even though the holiday had been over a week before, Valentine’s Day bows and hearts and paper Cupids still hung on the walls; someone had even had a little fun with the paintings, adding Valentine’s stickers to the scenes. Lancelot was bringing Guinevere a heart-shaped box of chocolates.
“Leslie really isn’t a bad person,” Heidi said. “Just so you know.”
North nodded. “What makes you say that?”
“This whole thing is ridiculous. I mean, I support Yasmin, and what Leslie did was wrong, but I’m really not convinced anybody got the full story.”
One of the best tricks, North had found, was just being quiet. They’d left the crowds behind now, and the only sounds were their footsteps on the thick red carpet.
“I mean, it doesn’t make any sense. Ok, Leslie is a little extreme sometimes, but why would she break into Scotty’s room and then try to record him and Josue having sex? It just doesn’t make sense.”
North made a considering noise.
“Does she watch way more gay porn than she should?” Heidi asked. “Yes, probably. Is she hypersexual with the guys she meets? Yes, definitely. But breaking into someone’s room? Invading their privacy like that? I just don’t get it. Actually, I don’t believe it.”
“But someone did.”
“Oh, sure. Plenty of people. I mean, it was hard not to. Scotty and Josue were furious, and they had hotel security up to their room. I heard they were thinking about suing, and of course, that would have ended Queer Expectations for good.”
“This was last year?”
“Right. Indianapolis. Nobody except Scotty and Josue actually saw Leslie in their room; by the time the ruckus started, they were all out in the hallway. Scotty was genuinely furious, though. I mean, scary mad.”
“What’s Leslie’s version?”
Heidi shook her head and said, “You know what? I really shouldn’t be talking about this. Leslie’s my friend too. I just wanted you to know that she’s not a bad person.”
North tried the quiet trick again, but it didn’t work this time. Ahead of them, the hotel restaurant opened up on one side of the hallway, with a large sign proclaiming it THE ROUND TABLE. A cluster of people sat at a table close to the hallway, separated from the hall only by a half-wall partition. North took them in at a glance: a middle-aged gay man with thinning brown hair and a boxy blazer; a bottle-blond woman with enormous eyes and shlumpy black athleisure gear; a hard-faced older woman, her hair a much more expensively kept-up version of the black bob that Yasmin wore; and a gay couple, men who had to be in their seventies and who had, like so many couples, started to look like siblings with their Brylcreemed ducktails, one man in a pearl-snap shirt and the other in a Western-style black button-up with red stitching and red piping.
“Everyone,” Heidi said, “this is North McKinney, the gay detective. Gay detective, this is everyone. Clarence,” the man in the boxy blazer, “Mary Angela,” the bottle blond, “Serenity,” the hard-faced woman, “and Jerry and Rodney.” Heidi’s tone softened. “Aren’t they adorable?”
“If you really meant it,” the one in the Western-style shirt said, “you’d buy me a drink.”
Everyone burst out laughing. When they’d settled, Heidi said, “Mr. McKinney is trying to track down Leslie. Apparently Yasmin is very serious about the lifetime ban.”
“This is about the death threats,” Clarence said. “That’s what this is really about.”
“Oh Lord,” Mary Angela said, swirling her mimosa. “Please let’s not get started on that again. Did I tell you about my daughter and her dissertation adviser? She asked her to lunch. Have you ever heard of something like that? Like they’re equals. Like she wants to be her friend!”
