Chapter 12.

In the middle of all the emptiness that was his life right now, Ed couldn’t stop thinking about Jon, and how that sweet man deserved so much better. And how he was going to give it to him, as soon as this nonsense with his brothers was all settled. He was scared to call him, but he finally broke down and followed the trail from his brothers’ indiscreet P.I. back to Jon’s father on the East Coast. He wasn’t quite sure what it would accomplish, but he had to talk to the man. He was using a brand new cell-phone, which Gord cheerfully assured him was called a burner phone.

“Don’t you ever go to the movies?”

Obviously not.

He should have clued in when he had to go through three levels of assistants to get to the man, but he was too focused on the need to talk to him and taking this one extra step to make sure his dream lover was alright.

The voice that finally came across the phone line would have made his brothers roll over and piss themselves.

“You’re got a lot of fucking nerve calling me after how you treated my son …”

Lawrence, ‘call me Larry’, caught on very quickly once Ed managed to stumble through an explanation of what might be happening, and what he had done so far to keep Jon safe.

“Take care of yourself, too, Ed. You know they’re going to try a hit on you?”

Ed hadn’t thought about it in quite those terms, but he agreed to be more careful.

“I have a friend on the police force, and a bodyguard, and ...”

“Geez, you have to tell everybody everything? There’s no security in that. I’m coming out there. I’m long overdue for a visit with my son. I just have a few things to wrap up here, and then I’ll be out. You take care, okay? And I’m sending you a present, it’ll be coming by courier, you wear it everywhere, even in the shower, you hear me?”

Ed fought back an instinct to salute the man, even over the phone.

“Yes, sir.”

For the first time in weeks Ed thought maybe he could breathe easily. Between Connie and Larry, and all the diversions, Jon would be safe. And maybe he would be, too. He’d work on getting Jon to talk to him again later, once he could explain everything. Assuming he could; it was getting complicated. Maybe Jon was just going to have to take some of it on trust.

When a courier delivered a slim box to him at the Foundation office, containing a pretty twisted copper wrist band with a chunk of jade trapped in the strands, and a card that said “A night I’ll never forget, baby!” he laughed, for the first time in weeks, and locked it on, and wore it everywhere, as instructed. He’d never heard of mini-GPS technology before, and now he had one in his earlobe and one on his wrist.

He almost relaxed. He didn’t think he was being followed, he hadn’t heard anything from his brothers, his old apartment had sold quickly for a huge sum of money, and he was actually enjoying his work at the Foundation in a way that he hadn’t for years. He’d been able to breathe about that again once they’d been sure that the Foundation’s money was all secure and accounted for. His brothers hadn’t wanted to trigger an IRS audit, apparently.

If he died? He made sure that control of the Foundation would go to Gord, not his brothers, although he hoped he wouldn’t have the satisfaction of looking down from above to see them thwarted by that. His first impulse had been to leave it to Jon, of course, but he didn’t think Jon would enjoy the extra responsibility, and it would give Gord some entertainment in his retirement years. Ed didn’t think cops, even high-ranking-ones, made a lot of money, and their pensions were probably not worthy of the service they put in. The Foundation came with a small but adequate salary for the Director, which he was also beginning to suspect Jon didn’t need. Those condos weren’t in a low-income district.

The lawyer he was currently enriching was new, to him, and had nothing to do with the brothers or the Group, but the man seemed to totally understand that families could be ‘interesting’ to deal with, and didn’t ask any questions beyond what he needed to know. Breaking up the Group would be a major undertaking, and the lawyer suggested that the first thing they needed was a current audit of the holdings, which could be compared with past IRS submissions to establish fair value. That sounded ominous even to Ed, but he left it to the man. He had done as much as he could.

With a new grant cycle beginning, applications for all kinds of interesting projects and scams were coming across his assistant’s desk, and the two of them spent hours shaking their heads over the bad ones and investigating the good ones. Had it always been this much fun, if he’d cared enough to see it? Maybe at the beginning, but he’d been getting more and more tired every year. What had Mani called it? Sensory deprivation? Starved for touch, and love. Maybe that’s what had been wrong, until his lovely Jon had woke him up. Now he was feeling like he had a future, and he cared about a lot of things again.

He was out and about a lot more, too, spending more time exploring his city than he had in ten years. He just wished Jon was at his side. Every time he saw something that he thought Jon would like, usually something to do with cats, he wanted to buy it, and many times he did. He didn’t bother with self-control. He already had several boxes in his rental apartment full of ‘Jon’ stuff, as well as a large and elaborate cat climbing tree that Myrtle and Vine would love. He hoped – they were cats, after all.

He had his assistant’s office renovated while she off for an extended long weekend, and had more fun than he would have thought possible redoing it in her favorite colors. He turned her loose with a credit card to pick up desk accessories and wall art, and was embarrassed when she burst into tears and hugged him. She went back to work with renewed energy. Maybe everyone needed a bit of stroking.

The Foundation could get back to really doing some good in the community, and his parents would be proud of that. It was hard to tell some of the scammers apart from the winners, but going to the applicant’s offices, talking to the people and seeing what they were really doing kept him busy, and he really needed to keep busy.

This particular Friday afternoon investigation that had taken him to a shadier part of town wasn’t even a scam; it was beginning to look like a wild goose chase. The address they’d been given wasn’t correct, and instead of taking it as a warning sign he just sighed. It wasn’t the first time that had happened. 

Ed turned his back on his cab and the traffic to make a call to his office to check the address, shielding his phone from the noise. Unable to get a clear signal, he walked around a corner, and half a second too late remembered Gord’s warning to stay out of dark allies.

When he regained consciousness he had the worse hangover that he’d ever had, and then he realized it was a far worse error of judgement than drinking too much. He was in a poorly lit basement or a cellar or something similar that was dirty and damp. He wasn’t tied up or gagged, and he took this to mean that there wasn’t anyone around who would hear him yelling and banging on walls, so he didn’t waste his energy. He checked, discreetly, and discovered that although his phone and his wallet were gone, he still had both his new earring and his new wrist band. Excellent, to the extent that anything about this situation could be excellent.

What would a naive man do? Especially a privileged white one?

He banged on the door that separated the basement from the main floor, and demanded to know what was going on. The response was some laughter and a rude response in Spanish.

He could hear voices which faded in and out as the speakers moved around upstairs, but he could put together enough of the conversation to make him feel ill. Gord and Lawrence had both warned him, hadn’t they? He had known that something like this was probably going to happen, but still part of him mourned that his brothers would sink this low.

He had been kidnapped by these guys, whoever they were, on a contract from his brothers, aka ‘lla estupidos gringos’. What could they hope to gain by that? Would Kevin get to be a hero by rescuing him? That seemed an unlikely scenario, especially if the first thing he did upon being rescued was punch Kevin.

Then he figured it out. He would have to die, of course, after his loving family had milked the kidnapping publicity for all it was worth. That farce would be followed by his brothers crying crocodile tears, mourning their darling baby brother who they would have given anything to have had back again. They had warned him, they would say, but he just hadn’t listened …

As an aspiring politician, this would also give Kevin solid grounds for a far right conservative platform based on fighting crime, violence and illegal immigrants, as well as a great deal of well-timed name recognition. He hadn’t thought Philip and Kevin were capable of such a devious plan.

Would they try and cheat the kidnappers as well? They were greedy enough. He wondered if they had taken into consideration the consequences of pissing off a Latino street gang. Or the possibility that Gord and Larry wouldn’t buy this story for two seconds. None of which would help him if he was dead, of course.

His powers of deduction were proven correct when the speakers and the conversation moved back over where he could hear it better, even if it was still in Spanish. His Spanish was good enough, and getting better every minute.

“If we kill him anyway, why not just do it?”

“Nah, we have to keep him alive until the ransom is paid. They are very clear on that, idiot. Then we kill him.”

“So we take a picture of him every day, with the date stamp?”

“Si, that works.”

The only thing that really surprised him was the young man who came in to bring him a bottle of water and a sandwich, and take his date-stamped photo with an iPhone. Ed couldn’t remember his name, but he was one who he recognized from the Community Garden, who had been hanging around with Rafe and Miguel. He saw something in the man’s eyes, a warning or a plea, and didn’t give any indication that he recognized him. Maybe the man was on his side, or maybe just trying to survive. Either way, it wouldn’t cost Ed anything to shut up, and it wouldn’t help either of them for him to say something.

The young man took the photo, winked at him, and was gone. The wink was promising, wasn’t it?

He could tell time by the fading of daylight, and as everything went dark outside he knew the search would be on for him. He and Mani had planned to meet at the theatre for some terrible action-adventure movie that was premiering that evening. He had pretended that he really wanted to go to the opera, until Mani had looked ill. Then he’d grinned and confessed that he’d really prefer the movie too.

Thank God Mani hadn’t been with him; Mani with his sweet pregnant wife. This was his own stupidity to deal with. Mani would have got himself hurt, or be trying to get out the window. Ed surveyed it, and ruled that out. Too high up, and too small. Even Mani the cat wouldn’t be able get out of it.

He sank back against the wall under the window and rested, waiting. He had almost drifted off when he was startled back into consciousness by a scrabbling noise above his head. What the ...?

The small creature that was scrambling on the wall, but rapidly losing purchase, fell right into his hands before he had time to worry about what it was. It didn’t seem particularly grateful to be caught, in a hissing kittenish way. He wrapped it in his jacket to keep it from hurting itself, or him, and it settled down once it was cocooned against his chest. It felt good, maybe for both of them.

“Are you related to Myrtle and Vine?” he whispered to it. It hunkered down and stared up at him suspiciously with golden eyes. He couldn’t feel a collar around its neck. Damn. It would have been nice if a cat had delivered the key to the prison. Wrong fairy tale, obviously.

He slumped back to the ground, and cuddled the kitten against him. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with it, but he was pretty sure the gang who had him hostage wasn’t going to adopt it, and he knew his brothers didn’t like cats. He fumbled around until he found the remains of the sandwich he’d been given earlier, and offered the little one the last of the cheese. It liked cheese, apparently, and it didn’t take much to fill its little belly.  It curled up on his stomach, and they went to sleep that way. He was surprised how good it felt to have a small warm body to curl up with.

He started dreaming about Jon, and being with him, rolling around with his dream lover again. He was walking through the Garden with him, holding hands and always being together, cats hunting through the tall grass at their sides. In his dreams, all three cats got along with each other. He faded in and out of the dreams, and the reality of his captivity didn’t matter quite so much.

In the faint light of morning he had a chance to check the kitten over, and although it was small and thin, it appeared to be uninjured. It was a pretty little tortoiseshell which now purred at his every touch. As fond as he was getting of the little thing, he debated punting it back through the window to keep it out of harm’s way. His captors seemed more the type to have big mean dogs, although maybe that was a stereotype. Or maybe the dogs had chased his new friend through the open window in the first place?

The young man appeared at what might have been lunch time with a bottle of water and some kind of convenience store sandwich, and he instinctively tried to hide the kitten. Unfortunately its motorboat purr was going strong, and his waiter stared at him in surprise then muffled a laugh. He hadn’t thought gang members liked kittens, but he’d been wrong a lot lately.

Ed gestured at the window, and shrugged, holding the kitten up. He was trying to work out sign language for “please help the cat”, but the response was both hands up facing him, one finger to lips, and then an OK signal. “Stop, be quiet, it’s okay”? The man was gone before he sorted it out. What was okay?

He thought he could keep track of time, but soon it all blended together. Room service expanded to include a handful of creamers each time, which Rose, as he named the kitten, enjoyed, the purring going up several notches in volume. He ate the bread from the sandwiches, and Rose got the filling, at least when it was edible. When it wasn’t they shared the bread. Another bright side to this, he thought, was that he was losing that extra couple of pounds that had been making his suits tight. Jon would be happy that he’d lost the love handles. Or would he? Or would he ever see Jon again?

He traced Jon’s scar in his mind, and thought about Jon fighting in a foreign country somewhere while he’d been sitting on the patio at the club moping about his lonely privileged life. He’d make it up to the man, somehow. Maybe by loving him forever? Whatever it took, he was going to do.

He spent a lot of time playing with the kitten, tickling its stomach and letting it chase his hair. He was glad he hadn’t bothered to get a haircut. He made long strings of the plastic sandwich wrapping for Rose to chase, with bottle caps tied to the ends. It gave them both something to do, while they waited for whatever was going to happen.