A Dark Alley and a Bad Idea: The Final Four Chapters

Chapter VII

Off the top of his head, Patrick could have thought of a half-dozen good places to hide out. He knew Joe had his own place despite practically living at Pete’s, plus there were a bunch of local businesses that would happily lend a back room for a few days. He did a rough list up in his head, but Travis surprised the hell out of him by opening the door to the last place he’d ever consider.

Patrick recognized the snide grin immediately as the door swung open and William welcomed Travis with open arms. His stomach turned over when the arms were joined by lips. Still deep in the kiss, William opened his eyes and studied Patrick, whose revulsion must have been visible on his face.

“Patrick, right?” Patrick paused a second, not sure how William knew his name. “What, you didn’t think word would get around? You’ve got a reputation.”

“But I never…”

“And that’s exactly why. It’s not just any piece of ass that can housebreak the infamous Wentz.” Patrick couldn’t help but note a hint of bitterness, and smiled at the thought that it might be jealousy. A moment later he wished he had kept the smile to himself, because William lunged out of the doorway and slammed him against the opposite wall. “What, you think you’re fucking special now? You think you’ve got something on us?” Patrick winced as William grabbed his crotch harshly in one hand. “You think this is so much better?”

Patrick figured if he was going to go down, he may as well go down hard. “Pete apparently thinks so.”

William’s eyes twitched and the smirk crept back across his face. “Well shame on me, ‘cause maybe it’s true. But it still doesn’t fucking matter. Your boy’s locked up. It’s time he learned what it’s like to be someone’s bitch.”

William spun on his heels and headed back into the apartment. Every reasonable bone in Patrick’s body told him to walk away, but he couldn’t seem to keep the voice in the back of his head quiet; it sounded too much like Pete. “Oh, so you didn’t so much make a man out of him as bend over for him, then.”

William froze and slowly turned around to face Patrick again. Even from three feet away he towered, and Patrick forced himself to find courage he never knew he had just to keep from crumbling under his gaze. “You don’t know shit, kid.” The voice in Patrick’s head begged permission to make a snide comment about the emotion in William’s voice, but he finally bit his tongue. “It’s not about who’s doing the fucking. All those pathetic little Johns who troll the streets looking for something to stick their dick in? They’re not taking advantage of us. We’ve got the power out there because without us they’d just have their ugly fucking wives and suburban hell holes. We’re their fix. They fucking need us. And Pete’s exactly the same.” He stepped towards Patrick and leaned in, whispering too low for anyone to overhear. “Don’t tell me you don’t feel it when he fucks you.” William put a hand on Patrick’s hip and slid it back towards his ass, pressing in and forcing the fabric of his jeans tight against his ass hole. “You’ve felt it. You know how much he needs you. It isn’t ‘want’ or ‘love’ or ‘passion’; you’re his drug.” Patrick’s body was wedged between the wall and William’s body so tightly he could barely breathe. “You get him high when you get him off. And don’t kid yourself, he fucking hates it. He hates it and he hates himself for it. Eventually he would have left you, too. He would have gotten sick of knowing that he couldn’t get by without you, and he’d pack up and disappear.” William’s voice broke a little, and he pulled back a few inches, glowering down at Patrick. “You should be fucking grateful that we had him locked up, ‘cause now he can’t ever actually leave you.”

William turned to leave again, and Patrick let out a ragged breath he didn’t even know he’d been holding. The hallway emptied itself into the apartment, leaving Patrick alone against the wall. As the door closed he couldn’t help but say one last thing. “You set Pete up?”

William didn’t even turn around. “Of course I did. He’s too good to get caught. Just don’t go getting any ideas about telling that to the cops.” William cocked his head and spoke over his shoulder. “Pete’s good, but I am so much fucking better.”

Chapter VIII

After a few hours of identical streets and confused landmarks, Patrick found his way to Joe’s building. He was almost afraid to knock after how things had been between the two of them for the last few days, but the look on Joe’s face when the door swung open told Patrick that he knew there were more important things than who shared which bed.

“It was William. All of it. I don’t know how he set Pete up but he did.” Patrick made the announcement before he’d even sat down.

“No shit,” muttered Joe, completely unsurprised.

“So what are we going to do?” asked Patrick, settling on the couch next to a silent and somber Andy.

“Not fucking much we can do,” replied Joe out of one side of his mouth, cigarette dangling from the other. “He’s got a lawyer. Crooked, but good. The best we can really hope for is that he’ll get out on cheap bail and we can smuggle him off before the trial.”

“How cheap is cheap?”

“Don’t know. Depends on what they charge him with. I doubt he’ll come in under $25,000.”

Patrick tried to digest the number. “We… we don’t have that kind of money.”

“I know. Even working round the clock… Even if we hadn’t flushed everything… They’ll have the bail hearing long before we could make that kind of cash.”

“So…”

“So nothing. So we sit and wait and hope a good idea comes along.”

The night was short on good ideas, as was the next morning. A few other members of Pete’s crew came by the apartment, recognizing without prompting that Joe was now in charge. Anyone with money threw down what they had for the sake of bail, but when Pete’s lawyer came by at the end of the week to give them an update, he just shook his head.

“He’s not being charged with half the shit they had lined up, and I got reduced charges on the rest, but you’ll still be short, even if the judge is in a good mood.”

“How’d you swing that?”

The lawyer laughed at Patrick, giving him the kind of ‘you’re so naïve’ look that had been glued to Pete’s face when they’d first met. “William’s smart, yeah, but he’s also arrogant. He covered his own ass, but Pete had plenty to say about pretty much everyone who works for him. Even Travis,” he added, glancing over at Joe, who had just opened his mouth to ask exactly that. “His little empire is ruined. And there’s a good chance one of his own will turn on him at some point in the investigation. But you’re not getting Pete out on bail. Even if I can arrange it, you can’t afford it. He’s going to trial, and to get the deal, he’ll plead guilty.”

A roomful of shoulders dropped. The lawyer excused himself and a handful of stragglers went out to find their respective corners. Joe waited until the room was quiet again before turning to Patrick.

“You’ve got to go back to Pete’s place.”

“What? The building is crawling with cops!”

“No. I mean, yeah, I’m sure it’s being watched, but they’re not going to have someone there all the time. Look, everyone else who worked for Pete is known. We’ve all got records. You’ve never been printed, and even if you had, you haven’t actually done anything illegal. The cops won’t know that you just aren’t some random tenant, so go to the building and see if you can get back into Pete’s. He had to have stashed some money somewhere. The cops can’t have found everything.”

Patrick wanted to argue, but he couldn’t. If nothing else, Pete had always been resourceful. There was bound to be something the cops had overlooked. He nodded and stood up, taking Joe’s cell with him so they could stay in contact.

Chapter IX

Patrick didn’t have any trouble spotting the unmarked car. A black sedan with two well-dressed men just drinking coffee stood out like a sore thumb. Most of the cars along the street were beat-to-shit pieces of junk, and if there were ever two men in a car, it was parked in an alley and they weren’t in the front seat.

Patrick tried to walk normally, but the feeling of eyes on him made walking naturally seem unnatural. He sort of staggered up the street and into the building, turning to take the east stairs, even though the west ones were a more direct route.

There were no cops outside the room, but the door was sealed with a police sticker. Keeping a close eye out for anyone passing down the corridor, Patrick spent close to ten minutes carefully peeling back the edge, inching the sticker away from the doorframe. The cheap paint flaked off on the back, making Patrick again grateful that the place was a shithole.

When he finally had the sticker off, he opened the door and gaped at the sight before him. Pete must have been up for some serious shit for the DA to get the warrant, because the apartment was gutted. Furniture was flipped over and torn open, every drawer had been emptied onto the floors, and half the walls had holes in them where the police must have thought the plaster looked sketchy. Patrick hopped between piles, navigating his way to the bedroom, but didn’t hold out much hope that the cops had been any less thorough in there. His suspicions confirmed, he pulled out the cell and sat down on a corner of the demolished mattress.

“Hello?”

“Hey Joe. There’s… dude, there’s nothing here. They ripped the hell out of this place. If Pete had any money stashed, it’s gone.”

Joe didn’t bother with a real reply; he just sighed into the phone and hung up. Patrick’s eyes wandered. He’d spent so much time just memorizing the room, but now he barely recognized it. The bedding was heaped in a corner, the mattress had a massive gash running through it, the dresser had been emptied out and tipped, and a half dozen holes had been punched in the walls. Patrick closed his eyes for a moment and turned to the window. He could see the tiny cop car across the street, and his breath caught in his throat when he realized that one of the cops was looking back up at him. When the car door opened, he bolted, tearing back through the apartment and into the hallway. He opened the door to the east stairs but could already hear boots echoing up the steps, so he spun around and shot down the corridor to the west stairs. Halfway to the ground floor he stumbled in a pile of trash and went face-first onto the concrete landing. The door above him had already opened and he shook off his daze. In the half-second it took him to remember where he was, his eyes locked on a small, green wad of bills mixed up in the filth. His mind snapped into focus: Pete. Pete’s money. Last week. Here. There wasn’t time for full sentences. Patrick grabbed the wad and jumped to his feet, barreling down the last flight and flying out the door.

Even when he was thinking straight, the streets were a confusing mess to Patrick. With nothing but the thought of escape and a rush of adrenaline pumping through him, he may as well have been in another country. His lungs felt like they were on fire when he finally stopped, throwing his back against the nearest wall as his spent legs fell out from under him. For ten minutes he just struggled to gather his breath, not giving a flying fuck about the people casting curious glances in his direction or the buildings that framed his momentary hovel.

When he’d finally gathered his breath, he pushed himself back up onto his feet, every muscle in his legs screaming against the task. He looked around for some landmark, or even a cab that could get him back to Joe’s, but his eyes immediately locked on to the building across the street and, exhaustion forgotten, he walked up the front steps, through the main door, and to the nearest officer.

“I’d like to see Peter Wentz.”

Chapter X

Pete looked like hell. He was curled up in one corner of the cell, scowling at the wall and running the harsh material of the bunk sheets between his fingers. He cocked his head when Patrick and the officer approached his cell, and when he looked up and saw the familiar face, broke into the widest grin Patrick had ever seen on him.

“Hey,” offered Patrick, not sure of the etiquette of this kind of visit.

“Hey. My lawyer said he was going to go see you guys.”

“Yeah, he was by Joe’s place earlier.” Patrick hesitated for a moment, self-consciously running a hand over his left pocket where the cash he’d recovered from the stairwell was pushing against the material. “We managed to get some money together, so if you’re granted bail…”

“Don’t even worry about that. They’re pushing for a speedy trial since I’m pleading guilty. With what I’ve been talked down to I’ll probably just end up with massive fines and a fucking lifetime of probation. Even if I do get locked up, it won’t be for long. If we get creative it’ll just make everything worse when they track me down.”

Patrick almost laughed. “What, you’re noble now?” It occurred to him that he and Pete had never really joked around. Whatever kind of relationship they had, it wasn’t an affable friendship, which is why it caught him off guard when Pete laughed openly and puffed out his chest, posing like a superhero. A moment later the grin softened and Pete put a hand out through the bars, cupping Patrick’s face a little.

“Patrick…” Patrick stepped back out of Pete’s grasp, and the grin fell completely. “Hey, what are…”

“Pete.”

“Come on, man, I need you right now. I… I need you.”

Patrick looked up at Pete and looked for the sincerity in his eyes. He found it easily. Pete needed him so badly, and pulling away had been a slap in the face. “Do you want me?” he asked, running over William’s rant in his head, hating how true it had all felt.

“I just said…”

“You said you need me. Do you want me?”

“Patrick…”

“Do you love me?” Again Patrick looked to Pete’s eyes and saw every word he couldn’t stand to hear, for the moment grateful that Pete wouldn’t answer out loud. He let out a heavy sigh and took another step back, standing completely out of Pete’s grasp. He heard his name again as he turned and headed back up the hallway to the waiting officer.

*     *     *

The morning of the hearing, Pete sat down next to his lawyer and began fidgeting with his handcuffs, running each link of the chain that tied them to his feet through his fingers like a rosary. He heard a harsh whisper behind him and turned to see Joe leaning over the rail.

“Dude, hey, how’re you holding up?”

Pete forced a half-smile. “Not bad. Um, how’s Patrick?”

“Shit, dude, I don’t know. We sent him back to your place four days ago to poke around and he just split. We thought the cops had grabbed him but he left this in the mailbox, so I don’t know.” Joe pulled a rumpled envelope out of his back pocket. On the front Pete’s name had been scrawled in messy, hurried letters. He took it from Joe and ripped it open, pulling out the single sheet of paper inside.

“Now you can’t leave me.”