A Mutual Friend Page 6

  But Anton didn’t say anything into the phone. He just frowned, eventually pulling it away from his ear and staring at it, then listening again.

  He listened for so long I said, “One of those Chinese scams?” Although why would he be listening to that?

  Anton shook his head, still listening intently. At last, after what seemed like two minutes, he sadly hit the END button and looked into the distance.

  We had stopped walking by now, about to step up onto a boardwalk. The beauty of the day, strolling aimlessly with the delicious Anton Primo past the London Bridge, suddenly evaporated. The concentration in his face turned him back into a psychologist, and my cock deflated. Something serious was afoot.

  “Growling,” he said at last.

  “Growling? On your phone?”

  “Yes, otherworldly growling noises.”

  “For two whole minutes? Was it live or recorded?”

  He finally looked at me. “Couldn’t have been live, because how does a demon phone someone? I’ve heard of this happening before. This is the first stage, called infestation. The next is oppression of the troubled soul, and then you’ve got a real problem.”

  I tried to scoff. “You’re talking demonic possession again. Why don’t we get some kind of expert, you know, like an exorcist, to cleanse the building?”

  Anton shook his head with certainty. “No. People see and hear these strange things and hire those so-called experts. They stalk around in wizard robes uttering nonsense. The demon laughs at them.”

  “Then what do you recommend?”

  “We deal with this ourselves.”

  I chuckled. “I’m less of an expert than the guy in the wizard robes.”

  He looked me intensely straight in the eye. “You’re here for a reason, King. Both ghosts and demons can be highly malicious. But only the demonic has the strength to bring about the negative phenomena we’ve seen—that black blob, this animal growling, calling itself by name.”

  I nodded. “Beetlejuice.”

  Anton frowned, and I felt him judging me. “You dreamed of Beelzebub in your sleep paralysis state.”

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  “That’s not too coincidental for you?”

  I felt like I was being dressed down by my father, back when he was a cop. “No,” I admitted weakly. “I guess I just don’t want to face it.”

  Anton smiled then, all judgment vanished from his face. He even clapped me on the bicep reassuringly. His touch was electrifying. I realized with a shock that I wanted to kiss him.

  I’d never kissed another man. My feelings for Anton were gentle now. I wanted to wrap my hand around the back of his neck and open my lips over his. I wanted to sweetly delve into his mouth, snaking the tip of my tongue behind his upper teeth. I wanted to—

  “Don’t worry, King. I can handle this myself, though I’d rather have your power by my side. You can take a room on the other end of the building if you don’t want to deal with Barclay Samples.”

  I shook my head. “That’s okay. I’ll stay where I am. This is some interesting shit. Keep me occupied until I find that damned heroin.”

  He smiled and clapped me again. I opened my mouth to say something, maybe a word or two of affection, but suddenly some moron was yelling, “Balls up, ladies and gents! I got some cousin-loving shit to tell you, Dr. Primo!”

  Some incredibly skinny, sort of lopsided guy in a Bent Zealots cut was cripping down the boardwalk toward us, yelling like a maniac with his ass on fire. Anton, at once alert, took the stairs two at a time to meet the biker on the promenade. I stood respectfully a step down, because I didn’t know him, eagerly eavesdropping.

  “Barclay Samples is on the loose! We heard from our police informant that he broke into someone’s house on Onyx Lane. Rugs and beds saturated with spilled food, cleaning fluids, booze, shoe polish—"

  “Shoe polish?” cried Anton, just as I was about to.

  “—cologne, perfume. Towels clogging toilets. Furniture all turned over, some of it broken.”

  Anton held out a calming hand to the skinny freakazoid. “Wait. Furniture all turned over? What sort of furniture?”

  The kid’s eyes turned as large as the stuff he described. “Big furniture. We’re talking stuff like a giant couch, a dining room table, a refrig—”

  “Refrigerator,” echoed Anton, nodding knowingly. “I’m telling you Twinkletoes, I think this was the work of Barclay Samples, but not in the way you think.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, coming to stand on the boardwalk.

  Turning to me, Anton painted a picture with his hands. “This is demoniacal activity, King, not ghosts. A refrigerator weighs three hundred pounds. Demons aren’t affected by physical boundaries or distance. Barclay might not have even been inside this house.”

  “Oh, he was,” insisted Twinkletoes. “One of the owners, who was in a room that wasn’t touched, followed this weirdo in his car, yelling at him out the window the whole way.”

  “Barclay doesn’t have a car,” I pointed out.

  “Right, he was on foot. Well, Onyx Lane isn’t too far from some major streets. So where does Barclay go? A fucking gun shop. That’s when the guy left and went to the police station. That’s how we heard the mole’s report. So he didn’t know Barclay’s name or identity, thank god.”

  Anton and I gaped at each other. This wasn’t good.

  Twinkletoes shaped his arm into a welcoming arc. “Come. Turk’s boat is right here. Let’s go sit on it and wait for Lily.”

  We strolled down the boardwalk like normal men out for a lovely morning sail. I felt compelled to point out, “Didn’t Lily and Flannery go get Crusty’s body from the clubhouse?”

  “Yeah,” said Twinkletoes, tossing a hank of hair from his eyes. “They’ve got to store it at the Nichols Building until they can arrange for a funeral home.”

  That didn’t bode well, either. But it was hard to think of anything demonic as we walked down the dock to the boat. The sun warmed the hand-hewn bricks of my beloved London Bridge, I was walking behind a hot Catalan psychologist with a well-rounded ass, and we were about to bask in the sun on a forty-foot cutter.

  Sure, there was a guy running around Lake Havasu who was nuttier than a squirrel turd. It was possible he might have a gun. They gave out guns in Arizona to any rando with a meth-head to his madness. With no waiting period for a gun, who knew what that bald loony bin reject was doing at the moment? I didn’t seem to care as we took our seats, and Twinkletoes broke out a bottle of Jameson whiskey.

  F

  D

  r. Primo, Dr. Primo.”

  ¿Que? I removed my forearm from my face only to be blinded by the sun.

  When I finally raised my torso from the bench seat and blinked a hundred times, I saw King in a similar position on the opposite bench seat. Only, he didn’t have a shirt on. The sight made me forget to wonder why we were doing this.

  Shirtless? It all came back to me—the bottle of Jameson, what an easy drunk I was, obviously passing out, but shirtless? A nasty pink burn shaded the lovely contours of King’s pectorals and abs. Basically, he was as deathly white as they came. Not anymore. Had we . . . done something? I tried to catch King’s gaze to see if he acknowledged anything.

  “Rise and shine, motherfuckers!” proclaimed Twinkletoes merrily, emerging from the hatch and stepping nimbly over the companionway.

  “Ugh,” said King, sitting upright, expression crinkled with dismay.

  I felt my own chest. I still wore a shirt. “What the hell?”

  Lily Silverberry cheerfully plunked herself down next to me, fingers laced between her knees. “Dr. Primo! I just came to invite you to a party, but I see you already had one of your own.”

  “We did?” I queried, rubbing my face with my palm.

  “Ugh,” said King again, accepting a plastic bottle of water from Twinkletoes. “What the fuck happened? I don’t get much chance to drink alcohol, in case you didn’t notice.” He finally looked at m
e. He wrinkled his eyes in what could have been a knowing smile. I was even more confused.

  “What party?” asked Twinkletoes. “We just had one last night. Man, you should’ve been there at Dr. Moog’s yurt out at Screwbean Spring. It was just like a frat party, with tequila shots and watermelon Jell-O.”

  I coughed in preference to retching. “Is tonight’s party like that?” If so, I would not go. I might have been a retired priest, but I wasn’t as rugged as Noel. In New York, when not exorcising demons, I worked in the worst ghettos of the city, Brownsville and East Harlem, so seeing blood or injections wasn’t an unusual thing for me. But Jell-O shots were something else altogether.

  “Nah,” said Lily. “I doubt Lock will have a six-man beer bong.”

  King looked even paler than usual. “You go, Anton. I’ll keep an eye on Barclay.”

  I shook my head so fast I could’ve heard my lips flap. Going to Lock’s party was probably a good idea, politically. I should get to know my employers better. “No. Why don’t you come with me, King? These guys didn’t do their fair share last night. It’s their turn to watch the possessed.”

  “Possessed?” said Lily.

  “I can’t go—remember?” said King with great portent.

  Oh. I did remember. The Bent Zealots didn’t know that King had lost their “product.” “Just come. No one needs to know.”

  King said, “But they’re going to remember me from the fight.”

  Lily lifted an upper lip. “Yeah. Like I remember you.”

  I insisted, “Just explain the misunderstanding. Come. Sooner or later you’re going to need to stop hiding from the Bent Zealots.”

  Twinkletoes said, “Explain how you thought you were helping them. You got all confused because that one skinhead was wearing a leather vest.”

  King sighed. “Sounds kind of dubious at best.” But he agreed to come.

  We returned to the Nichols Building to get some clean clothes. Barclay wasn’t there, although his dank, putrid room still smelled like sulfur. I was in my office putting some decent clothes into a smaller daypack when a giant groan came from the kitchen.

  “Oh, God! What the fuck? This is fucking it, Anton! Fucking it!”

  I raced to the kitchen, where King was cringing from something on the counter. I looked. A blender of what was obviously blood had overflowed, gore oozing down over the control buttons. I tilted a saucepan on the stovetop. Organs, probably feline. Smelled like gizzards.

  “Probably just a cat,” I said, in what was apparently not a soothing voice.

  “Fuck me dry!” King cried. “I know you’re used to this shit, Anton, but I’m not. Let’s just turn this asshole into the cops for animal abuse and wash our hands of him!”

  “And he’ll be out on the street in two hours. This infestation will continue even if he’s not here, King.” I gripped his bicep reassuringly. “It’s up to us to clear this, to make it right.”

  Lily and Twinkletoes had entered the kitchen. They stood side by side like two silhouettes, not making a squeak.

  “There’s no infestation!” protested King. “This is strictly a matter of a crazed sonofabitch, Anton. No demons. I mean, the wheels have stopped turning and the hamster has died!”

  Lily giggled. “Barclay’s as confused as a fart in a fan factory.”

  King pointed angrily at her in agreement. “See? It has nothing to do with any demons. I say we go back to the loony bin, tell them what’s happening, and re-admit him.”

  Twinkletoes stepped forward. “Won’t work. Like Antonio said, the demonic infestation will still remain here.”

  “Well, let’s move!” suggested King. “Who cares if a fucking empty office building burns to the ground?”

  “Like Turk and Lock told me,” I said, “we can’t just dump our problems on other people. It’s not the Bent Zealots way. Barclay was a Prospect and the club doesn’t make a habit of throwing them under the bus.”

  “And dude,” said Twinkletoes, “the guy is possessed by demons. Can’t you smell that?”

  “He could’ve burned matches,” said King, his mouth a thin line. “You know, like people do in bathrooms.”

  I squeezed his arm harder. “King, have you already forgotten the entity that called itself Beelzebub?”

  “What the fuck?” asked Twinkletoes. To Lily he said, “Are we sure we want to spend the night here?”

  King shook off my hand, windmilling his arms. “We were probably imagining it, Anton! Shit, we didn’t get much sleep, did we? Why else would we have passed out on the boat? We were shattered!” He made as if to storm out of the kitchen.

  “Where you going?” shouted Lily.

  “Yeah,” I added, “where are you going, King?”

  I knew he would stop. Our next destination was The Happy Hour, where they had a shower. King could not walk in there alone without an escort, without a wingman to explain his presence. King stopped and twirled to face us, features distorted with anger.

  I called out, “What do you think that irregular form was this morning in Barclay’s room? What’s your explanation for it?”

  “Hallucinations!” King erupted. “We were in that whack-a-mole’s presence. It rubbed off on us.”

  “Then why did we both hear the word ‘Beelzebub’?”

  A temporary silence. Twinkletoes took this chance to whisper, “Beelzebub. That is downright creepy.”

  Various emotions battled for dominance in King’s face. He’d been sunburned on the boat, and his cherry red cheeks made the fight more graphic. He clenched and unclenched his hands at his sides. I was satisfied that eventually he’d realize he was fucked and stuck, so I just stared with an uncustomary dominance at him.

  Yes. He stomped off in the direction of his office, like a boy who’d been reprimanded.

  It would be nice if he’d stay that way, but this was a guy who was born to dominate. I probably liked it like that, deep down.

  “Man,” Lily moaned, “I wanted to go to Hollywood with my movie. Instead I’m stuck with Beelzebub.”

  b

  Anton had explained to Turk and a guy named Haven that it had all been a giant misunderstanding with me thinking the guys in the vests were the bad guys. Haven was the one who had killed Crusty, so it wasn’t even an option to lie to these men.

  “I’m helping you now,” I said sincerely, hands spread as though surrendering. “I’m working with Antonio to see what’s up with this Barclay Samples clown. It’s very interesting work.”

  Haven cocked an eyebrow. Man, he was one gruff guy. “What’s your regular work, out in the vanilla world?”

  Vanilla world? Wasn’t that a term BDSM people used to describe those not into spanking and hanging people from the ceiling? “Ah, I’m a truck driver,” I had to admit.

  Although I was sweating bullets, no one put two and two together with the stolen heroin. Turk said, “Antonio, do you need an assistant? Does this guy help you?”

  “Oh, very much so!” Anton cried, although I don’t know why he covered for me. Just half an hour ago, I’d been telling him his demon was a lie, a mass hallucination that we both shared. Demons were his life’s blood, his passion, and I was denying their existence. “He’s already become somewhat friends with Barclay. Barclay trusts him, which is a big start.”

  I knew what we both had seen and heard. It freaked me out. Life had been rough enough lately without tossing a disembodied devil into the mix. I’d already run out of pill mill medication and had been toking a lot of the Magic Bus strain that came from Turk’s own Herbal Legends dispensary. Lily Silverberry was a shatter expert there. The Magic Bus was an indica strain high in the painkilling CBD, perfect for my back. I owed the club one for that weed, too. I didn’t want to think what I’d do the next time my company did a drug test.

  Anton continued on in his authoritative, Spanish tone. “He is a very brave soul, which is necessary for this sort of work. Barclay Samples has been displaying an escalating series of criminal behaviors. We have reas
on to believe he might’ve gotten his hands on a gun.”

  “Then you need to be armed,” said Haven.

  To my surprise, Anton shrugged. “Fine with me. King?”

  “Fine with me,” I imitated. “I’ve got a sawed-off shotgun I carry in my truck in case of danger.”

  “Have you ever used it?” queried Turk.

  “Only once,” I admitted. “When someone giving me a blowjob turned out to be a he/she, I went sort of ballistic.” What I didn’t say was that I allowed him to finish the cocksucking to completion. Then I got a little miffed at him, wearing a dress and panties that displayed his massive erection like that. Who did he think he was fooling? When I kicked him out, paying him only half what he wanted, he got his pimp to come after me in the truck stop shower. I managed to make it back to my truck, running like a naked Kenyan on speed, before fumbling with my shotgun. I plugged the guy in the arm before he could plug me.

  Truth is, I wanted Turk and Haven to know I was one of them. That I’d even get a blowjob by a transvestite.

  Anton seemed surprised as well. He looked at me with raised eyebrows.

  “What?” I asked, mock offended.

  “Nothing,” he said lightly, and turned back to the bikers.

  “I’ve got a spare Ruger you can use,” offered Turk.

  Haven said, “I’ve got a couple of semiautos.”

  “Maybe the Ruger will be better,” said Anton. “It’s been awhile since I’ve shot a gun. Maybe we can go to the shooting range.”

  So our fate was sealed, at least temporarily, and Anton was allowed to be the first to shower. Oh, man, was I looking forward to a nice, cool shower, a washing away of all the sins, smut, and sulfur I’d accumulated during the past few days. I wandered uncomfortably around the area where I had dry-humped Anton just a couple days earlier, hands behind my back like a casual observer. A potent shiver ran from my cock through my balls, raising gooseflesh on my ass. Remembering my firm dick wedged between the juicy globes of his butt had my cock stiffening.