The General and the Horse-Lord (9 page)

Kim stuck his head in the door, gave a low wolf whistle when he saw them. “What is with you two? You’re making out like teenagers every time you drink tequila.”

John looked over his shoulder. “Could I suggest you not be so quick to speak when a random thought floats through your empty head?”

“Okay, fine, fine. I’m just saying. Horse-Lord, did you see my tee shirt?”

“I did. Please don’t make me look at it again.”

The split lip had healed, but there was still a little smudge of discoloration under his eye. John wondered if he was going to cover it up with makeup, but Kim just slid some Cherry Berry lip gloss over his mouth and stuck the tube in his pocket. “Ready, Uncles? We’re going to Effex downtown. They’ve got a rooftop bar and a dance floor down below. You’ve love it.”

A taxi dropped them off on Central, and Kim led the way through a group of rowdy young men and women, already partying on the street. Downtown was glitzy at night, the neon pulsing and the lights twinkling brightly, the whole scene shiny and hip. John and Gabriel walked about five steps behind Kim. He seemed to know every person on the street. He had to stop and kiss a few boys, big smacking kisses that looked like five-year-olds playing, and he let some goon in a white sleeveless tee suck on his neck while he giggled and studied the stars. He reapplied his lip gloss and pushed open the doors.

“Friend or foe?” Gabriel was studying the goon. John shrugged. They had worked out a code, a “save me code,” as Kim called it. If he dropped his lip gloss onto the floor, he wanted his Uncle John. If he dropped a dollar bill to the floor, that meant he needed emergency egress. Kim had explained these signals so carefully John’s heart cracked a little in his chest, remembering the baby who’d needed to be picked up and carried safely above the world.

John and Gabriel took up position next to the bar. The main floor of the club had a DJ supplying the music, and there was a second floor with a wide balcony circling the dance floor below. As far as John could see, the balcony was for strolling hand in hand, seeing and being seen. There were stairs to an outdoor rooftop bar on the third floor. Gabriel had checked it out, said it was the place for old guys like them to hang out. The music up there was straight out of 1968.

John leaned against the bar, studied the balcony, nodded at his guy watching them from above. “Everything set?” Gabriel nodded yes.

Kim floated over to them, giggling at something one of his friends was whispering in his ear. He leaned over. “I’ll come tell you if I leave the dance floor, okay? Maybe later on we can go up to the rooftop? You’ll like it up there. It’s quieter. I know the music is kind of loud down here.”

“Come get one of us before you go to the head.”

Kim nodded at Gabriel, his face troubled. “That’s where he did it, you know. In the men’s room.” His face brightened a bit. “Hey, you want to dance?”

Gabriel reared back. “God, no.”

“Uncle John? How about you?”

“The bodyguards never dance.”

“You can have some fun too. You don’t have to watch me every minute.”

“It’ll be more fun watching you than anything else I could be doing tonight.”

Kim gave him a look like he wasn’t quite sure what John meant, then a quick hug around the waist and he plunged back onto the dance floor. Gabriel ordered them a couple of beers, and John pulled two pairs of yellow foam earplugs from his cargo pocket.

I
T
WAS
a couple of torturous hours later when Brian Walker came onto the dance floor. John had seen pictures of him in the faculty handbook, and the PI had taken some photos as well. John touched Gabriel on the shoulder, and Gabriel moved across the floor, disappeared into the crowd on the far side of the bar. John nodded to his guys on the second floor, gave them the thumbs-up.

The man was good-looking, tall and lanky, with wavy brown hair to his shoulders. He was with a boy who looked very young, so slender he was almost frail, with wispy blond hair and a blue streak like Kim’s. Kim was laughing, his arm around the shoulders of a boy with a multitude of facial piercings, Che on his tee shirt picked out in little crystals. When Kim turned around and saw Walker, he stiffened, and his hand went into his pocket, came out holding his lip gloss. He looked around for John, and his uncle gave him a little “come here” gesture with his finger. Kim hugged his friend good-bye and walked across the room. He had his lip gloss clutched in his fist so tightly that John just opened his arms, gathered him up close.

“I’m okay, Uncle John.”

John looked across the room at Brian Walker, then looked over his head to the huge banner that was being unrolled from the second floor balcony. It showed a photo of Brian Walker, and Gabriel had photoshopped a black board below his head, so it looked like a mug shot. His name was picked out in bright white letters on the board, and below the image, large black letters said, “FISTS ARE NOT FOR HITTING YOUR DATES.”

The dickhead looked at them, then followed John’s gaze over his shoulder. He spun around, studied the image, then pointed across the room at Kim, his face livid, shading to bright red. There was a crowd of dancing kids between them, and they were stopping, looking at the banner, pointing at it and staring at Brian Walker, the sudden buzz of conversation loud in the room.

John thought they had maybe a minute, a minute thirty. Kim didn’t see it, though. He had his head on John’s shoulder. “I saw that Fijian boy you were dancing with earlier, Kim. Nice-looking kid. Did you tell him you’d been to Fiji?”

Kim sputtered with laughter. “Oh, God, no. Do you remember?”

“You were such a sensitive boy, such delicate sensibilities! You were reeling in the street, trying to keep from retching, a handkerchief over your nose, and you kept saying, ‘My God! Sewers
and
dumpsters
and
the fish market!’.”

“I can still smell it. I thought, if I lost you and got stuck on that street, I would just die. If you disappeared, and I was alone there….”

“You won’t lose me.”

“That was just after Mom and Dad died. I guess I was thinking about what life would be like, to be a street kid in the third world. That might have been my life, if Mom hadn’t brought me home from Seoul.”

John didn’t know what to say. He’d had no idea Kim still thought about the past like that, still had fears he could be thrown back like a fish that was too small for market. “You about ready to go?” He stroked Kim’s back, kept his head down.

“Where’s the Horse-Lord?”

“I think he went to the head.”

Kim straightened, looking across the crowded dance floor. He saw the banner and stiffened. He was trying not to make eye contact with the dickhead, and he still had his lip gloss in his hand. “Oh, my God! What is that?”

Brian Walker was struggling through the crowd, making for them. John reached out, tugged him back into his arms, wrapped him up tight. “I love you, kiddo. Have I told you lately?”

Kim turned around and looked at him in surprise. “I love you too, Uncle John. Do you know anything about that banner? You didn’t do that, did you?” He was looking at his uncle, a question on his face, and he missed the crack of a boot on the side of a knee. Brian Walker screamed, took a header, and slid across the dance floor, plowing into startled boys and girls until he ended at the bottom of a pile of shrieking arms and legs. He screamed, clutched his knee, then his contorted face turned to John. John slung his arm across Kim’s shoulder, kept him from rushing out to the dance floor. “They don’t need your help, son.”

He had Kim by the sleeve, pulled him gently through the crowd until they were outside. Gabriel was waiting for them on the sidewalk. He turned, handed John his pair of yellow foam earplugs. “Those things really work. I could use a pair of those in court.”

Kim studied them both. “What just happened in there? Did you do that? I didn’t see what happened. Uncle John, I told you I didn’t want you to do anything.”

“The only reason I didn’t do serious damage to that dickhead was to spare your sensitive feelings. And I reserve the right to change my mind about that.” John reached out, pulled the little tube of lip gloss from his hand. He pulled the lid off, took a sniff. “This cherry isn’t as bad as that one you used to wear. What was it? Watermelon? The smell drove me crazy.”

Kim took it back, stuffed it into his pocket. He was moving between outrage and laughter. “Watermelon and green apple. I have every intention of buying a new tube tomorrow.”

Chapter 7

K
IM
stayed at home most of the weekend, but avoided him, and Gabriel spent Saturday moving out of his house. They had both agreed without speaking that it was probably better if John and Kim didn’t help him move boxes of his clothes to his pickup truck. He came back to John’s to sleep Saturday night, and was so miserable and restless in bed John finally pulled him outside to help him with the hot tub. John had a high fence around the back yard, and they worked together without speaking to fill the tub in the middle of the night. They turned on the heater and drank tequila until the water was warm. They climbed into the tub about four in the morning. Gabriel finally laid back, his head on an orange life vest, and floated in the warm water. John watched over him, watched the tears that slid down his face while he slept.

Sunday morning Gabriel drove off to his new studio apartment. The place looked to John like a seedy extended-stay hotel, and he wondered if Gabriel was making himself miserable as some kind of penance.

He was ready to go back to work Monday just to escape the gloomy house. Still no word from the president about what he intended to do, and John had decided to give him until the end of business Monday. Monday afternoon, just after lunch, he looked up to see Brian Walker balancing on crutches in his office doorway. He had an enormous padded splint on his left leg, looked like he couldn’t bend the knee. John studied him without speaking.

“Just so you know, I haven’t said anything about this. I know you did it. I wanted to be clear with you that this makes us even. I didn’t realize Kim had such an overly protective Uncle John! General John Mitchel, to some people. Who knew?”

“I might suggest you start packing,” John said. He sat behind his desk and folded his hands. The other man remained standing. “When you are out of this university and out of this town, we can discuss equity again.”

Brian Walker’s face was shading dark red, and he snarled, showing his teeth. John suspected this was the face Kim had seen, the other boys too, right before he’d raised his fist and punched them in the face. “You don’t know who you’re fucking with,
General
. You think you’re so important and powerful?”

John stood up, walked around the desk. “You can leave this university now before things get ugly. This is your last friendly warning.” Brian looked confused for a moment. John shook his head. “This was nothing, just a little love tap. You pick up your boys there? Or in your classes, professor? Somehow I doubt that boy you were with is old enough to drink. Is he even legal?”

“I don’t have to pick them up in class. They come to me. Kim was practically humping my leg, he was so ready to fuck, bending over for it like a little Korean dog.”

John could feel the corruption coming off the man, like the faintest odor of something rotten under the sweet-heavy aftershave. He remembered for one clear moment Kim’s face when he was a year old, spotting him across the orphanage floor, two front teeth, drool on his chin, and crawling across the room as fast as his skinny arms and legs could carry him. The clean, bright, delightful smell of his baby filled his memory, and he’d pounded Brain Walker in the mouth twice, had him down on the floor with blood smearing his chin, before he could draw a breath.

Cynthia came in the door, her hand pressed tightly over her mouth, but John waved her away. “This doesn’t make us even. I could spend the rest of my life kicking your corrupt ass and it wouldn’t begin to make us even. Now get the fuck out of my office.”

Brian struggled to his feet, his hands so tight on the crutches his knuckles were white. Blood was smeared across his face and down his shirt, and his mouth was torn. He stopped at the door like he might want to say something in parting, but John was back behind his desk, working.

He got a call from Gabriel just after the dickhead left. “El Presidente wants to see us, and so does Kim. He asked if I could fetch you and meet at Ho Ho’s for dinner.”

“Oh, God. I can’t imagine that place at dinnertime. Listen, can I give you some money to put aside in case we need bail? I don’t want to call Kim if I get arrested.”

“Did you assault someone?”

“Yeah. And there was a witness.”

“That’s too bad,” Gabriel said. “But unlikely to come to anything. He’s a coward. He does his dirty work in the dark. He wouldn’t run the risk of getting the police looking into his business.”

“I agree. But I’ll give you some emergency egress funding just in case.”

“I told Kim we’d be there at four for soup. I’m on my way to your office now to pick you up.”