The Silenced Tale, стр. 42

Elgar

With only enough time to pack a suitcase of fresh clothing, Elgar is immediately packed into a nondescript town car and driven straight to the airport. They stop over briefly to secure his fire-safe in the Seattle PD’s labyrinthine evidence locker for safekeeping. Plans are made over the radio unit in the car, and by the time they’re at SeaTac, Elgar knows that he’s going to have to go and check-in alone. Or at least, it will look like he’s alone. Jackson and Riletti are already there, waiting for him in plainclothes so they can accompany him through the airport, and take the flight to LA with him and Juan. There, he’ll be handed off to counterparts within the LAPD who’ll monitor him and the people around him for the duration of his stay.

Everything is secretive and hush-hush, and if it wasn’t for his fear of the mysterious man in black, Elgar would be reveling in how important and cool he feels knowing he has an undercover police detail.

They’d decided that Juan would meet him on the other side of security, where someone without a ticket can’t follow, just in case someone might decide to follow his assistant in order to get to him. But as the flight time gets nearer and nearer, Elgar feels sweat starting to bead under his beard and cap. Juan isn’t here yet. He isn’t here. The longer Juan’s arrival takes, the more fidgety he gets. Riletti and Jackson don’t seem disturbed, but Elgar can’t help staring at his phone, his knuckles white around the casing, willing it to chime with a message from Juan saying that he’d arrived safely. He’s so intent on the screen, in fact, that when someone flops down into the seat beside him, Elgar jumps and makes a noise that he will never, in a million years, admit to being a yelp.

“Chill, boss!” Juan says, struggling to pull the smile off his face. “Just me.” He’s laughing, the jerk.

“I was worried . . . I thought you’d be here by now,” Elgar says.

“I don’t look at my phone or text while I drive,” Juan counters. “Bad for your health.”

Elgar narrows his eyes and sizes up his assistant. “Speaking of—you look like ass.”

Juan snorts, but doesn’t contradict him. “Up all night.”

Elgar decides now is a good time for some more of those gay-sex jokes. “In a good way?”

Juan’s strained smile collapses. “In the exact opposite way. Boyfriend lost the entirety of his chill when he learned I was taking this trip with you.”

Elgar sits back, concerned. He’s never cared about the love lives of any of his other assistants, but Juan is rapidly becoming a friend, too, and, well, Elgar isn’t a complete narcissistic asshole. He hopes. “Is he not cool with you going for two weeks? Or is it that it’s me? Or . . . ?”

Juan grimaces. “He figured out who you are, and he’s been seething to have me introduce you. He started to get really creepy about it, and honestly, I just . . .” Juan rubs the inside of his elbow, shifting and wincing. “He got, ah . . . he’s into some kinky shit that I’m not . . . he didn’t even ask first and . . .” He rolls up his sleeve to show Elgar a messily taped square of gauze about the size of his palm. “I ended it. Kicked him out.”

Elgar wants to reach out, to see the wound under the bandage, but he thinks that would be invasive. Juan will show him if he wants to. Instead, Elgar seizes on the one phrase that stands out. “Kicked him out?” he asks, thinking that Forsyth would be proud of him for catching it.

Juan rolls his sleeve back down and shakes his head, rueful. “I didn’t realize it until I snatched the keys out of his hand and booted his ass to the curb, my old duffle stuffed full of his shit, but the crazy bastard was living with me. He left the house every day, but he was there every night—or near enough. He’d taken one of my bags and was . . . I don’t know, stealing laundry from the neighbors’ lines, or something? Christ, I don’t know. And I don’t care now. He’s out. He’s gone.”

“But where did you meet him?” Elgar asks, and that icy prickle down his spine is back. “How could you not know he was . . . homeless, I guess?”

Juan swallows hard, his eyes getting wet, a faraway glaze stealing over his face. “I . . . I met him in . . . in a bar,” he says, his voice dropping down into a thin, reedy breath that concerns Elgar instantly. “He was . . . end of the bar . . . asked me to . . . buy him a drink.”

“Juan!” Elgar snaps, the shaking horror seeping into his own skin making him feel chill and clammy.

“Boss,” Juan says, voice small and sounding very much like a child expecting to be chastened. “I think my . . . I think he . . .”

“Shhh,” Elgar says softly. “You don’t have to say it.”

“I’m sorry. I should have—”

“No, you couldn’t have known,” Elgar says gently, forgivingly. He doesn’t say: and there is nothing you could have done, I suspect, if you had. “Juan, I need to ask you something. I need you to tell me: what is his name?”

Sitting in the seats behind him, dressed like a married couple on their way to California for some sightseeing, Jackson nods once. He’s preoccupied with his smartphone, while his “wife” looks at a map of wine tours in Sonoma Valley, and from his position, Elgar can see that Jackson’s making notes on their conversation.

“I don’t . . .” Juan says, voice crackling and eyes suddenly shining, a desperate frown pulling furrows between his eyebrows and along his chin. “I don’t know. I don’t remember his . . . oh god, boss, why don’t I