Chapter Text
Are you open for trade
Your salvation, for something, for some thrills
Is a body of work for your inspection
You can trace, trace my concern
My concern
I've been looking for truth
At the cost of living
I've been afraid
Of what's before mine eyes
“Five-O” by James
"Seriously, brah, you need to get laid in the worst way."
Steve vaguely remembers waving off Kamekona’s exasperated words of a few days ago. "What I really need," he had said shortly, "is the name of someone on this damned island who knows who is sending Stinger missiles to the Samoans."
Kamekona hefted his thick hands in a calming gesture. "Soon, brah, soon. Island time, remember?"
Steve remembered. He sighed and then reached over the counter and got himself a Coke, dropping a hundred dollar bill on the counter in payment. "See if you can get them to speed it up just a little, man, will you?"
Kamekona nodded, swiped his hand over the bill and made it disappear somewhere about his person, then returned to the topic with a wide grin. "I know this guy, my ma swears by him. She says he can make the earth move for you and put it right back where it belongs, all for a very reasonable price. He’s a haole, but very nice to all the aunties. And a few of the uncles."
Steve choked, getting a nose full of Coca-Cola in his horror. The top of the Most Appalling list kept changing like a kaleidoscope in his brain. First, it was Kamekona recommending a hooker to him, then the idea that he needed a male hooker. Then he confronted the vision of Kamekona’s mother chatting with him about a prostitute, and giving him a good review.
"You okay dere, Steve?" A flash of worry creased the big man’s face as he watched Steve wiping away the Coke dribbling down his face.
"This is a joke. You are not seriously recommending that I hire a gay hooker, are you?"
"Eh, you need sumthin’ to take the edge off. And I’ll bet that pretty little tita cousin of Chin’s is off-limits in a big way." His eyebrow had quirked in a frighteningly confiding manner.
"K, man, I am a cop now. I cannot go around hiring hookers. Besides, what makes you think I’d go for a guy, anyway?"
Steve knew he had totally blown it by the kindly look Kamekona had sent his way. "Eh, I been wrong before," he said before his cell phone had rung. Steve wondered vaguely if he could cover up evidence of Kamekona’s untimely death. After a brief spate of pidgin and a big booming laugh, Kamekona had the information Steve was waiting for and they parted without anything else being said on the subject.
Now he thinks he should have said something else, something a lot more forceful, about male hookers and how they should not be sent to one Steven J. McGarrett.
Because he’s had a bad week. He’s had some good beers to take the edge off, too. When the first drink arrived, "already paid for, sir,” Steve remembers that one of Kamekona’s multitudinous cousins owns this bar. By the third drink, when a key-card for the motel next door arrived with a room number scribbled on a cocktail napkin, he’d started to forget why this was a bad idea. Later, he will remind himself that he’d already sort-of-known what he would find when he went to that room, and he had gone anyway.
It's a cheap Kalihi motel, better than some he's seen, but not great. It doesn’t charge by the hour, but it isn’t much farther up the economic ladder than that. The room is at the end of the building, around the corner from the manager’s office. It's the only one on this side of the building with a light showing through the orange polyester curtains beside the door.
The door opens in response to his tap and, when he looks up from his boots, it is to find a blond looking inquiringly at him. To be more exact, a blond man. A short blond man with very blue guarded eyes and an impatient twitch to his eyebrow.
"You K’s friend?"
Steve isn’t exactly certain what the guy is asking and he’s pretty sure he’s at the wrong door. This guy is barefoot, wearing dark jeans and a navy blue tee shirt. He looks like what he probably is – a mainlander here for the clubbing and waiting for some pimply Island kid to deal him some coke or X to start his night.
The guy makes an annoyed click with his tongue reminiscent of Steve’s great-aunt Sally and says, "Shamu. You know, big dude, about six feet wide, sells shave ice?"
Now Steve is wishing he hadn’t had that last drink. He could’ve figured the drinks and whatever, or whoever, waited for him in this room were from Kamekona; he was very grateful that Steve kept his younger cousins out of the gun trade (and jail) yesterday. But why in hell the big guy is making assignations for him with short blond dudes is a question Steve intends to ask him as soon as he extracts himself from this stupid situation.
"Look, he must have got it wrong," Steve says with the distinct enunciation of two beers and three of the swirly blue things.
"You really want to have this conversation out in the open?" the man asks practically. He steps back from the doorway, inviting him in with a sweep of his arm.
Steve has to admit he’s got a point and steps inside.
It’s a small room and the decor is predominantly orange and beige. There is a single lamp on beside the bed for mood lighting; it just succeeds in making his host look exhausted and a little bit haunted around the edges.
"There’s been a mistake," he starts. At least three by his count and those are just the ones Steve himself has made.
"Let’s see if you still think that in an hour."
The man is looking him up and down and his gaze is far too assessing for Steve’s liking. It is also weirdly hot to be the focus of that blue-eyed intensity.
"Sit," and the short guy pushes him just right and Steve sits, well, folds onto the bed.
Then Blondie says, "I’ve already been paid. Let me do what I do," and he slides to his knees, fingers already unbuttoning Steve’s pants. There is a condom unrolled with a hotter-than-hell mouth around his half-hard cock before Steve can even say, "Not interested."
Which would have been a lie, and Steve is usually pretty good at lying, unless someone is sucking his cock like they’re getting oxygen through it. Just now, the only kind of lying Steve is good at involves the motel bed beneath his back. He’s harder than he’s ever been and there are startlingly large hands pinning his hips to the scratchy orange coverlet. That hot mouth is sucking away his mobility, his autonomy, his heterosexuality. All he can do is lie there, jerking and gasping, as this strange guy plunders his dick like it’s the siege of Troy.
Those hands have started to stroke up and down his hips, drawing his pants down his thighs farther and farther on each pass. They’re just on the good side of tickling and he relaxes into them. Once the pants are out of the way, those big hands slide beneath his hips, lifting him even deeper into the hooker’s mouth. Jesus, doesn’t this guy have a gag reflex? A warm trickle of spit runs down his balls. It is the hottest and dirtiest thing Steve can ever remember feeling.
Then a slick finger slides into his ass and he shoots up off the bed like he’s doing crunches. "What the hell?" he yelps, but it’s not all indignation. No one has ever shoved anything in his ass for fun and no exam was electric like this.
The hooker just grins, lips curving obscenely around the head of Steve’s cock before he pulls off to say, "Calm down, He-Man. This’ll feel good."
He lets the tiniest edge of a tooth drag over the head when he slides it back into his mouth and Steve can’t do anything but slap back down on the bed and pant. He wishes there was something to bang his head against until his tormentor's fingers press deep inside him, hard and good, and he forgets everything else.
The guy is slurping him up like bad porn, but the noises are real and hot as hell when muffled a little around his own dick. Steve's whine sounds like an F-22, far away and high. Then the hooker shoves with his hand and Steve is gasping, pumping his hips up and down, trying to get as much of those fingers and that mouth as he can. He needs more heat, more of that skillful tongue, more pressure, anything to come.
He manages to get his elbows underneath him and shoves up a little. If this is really happening, he's no coward. Hell, it's so fucking insane he needs to see it to believe it. The guy's staring up at him, hard-eyed over a mouthful of thick, red cock. He knows what Steve wants. And that scares him worse than anything has in a long time.
Steve shoves the man’s head and kicks a little to scramble up the bed and away from his tormentor. His pants are tangled around his ankles and he yanks them up under his ass – bad choice to go commando today, but he hasn’t had time to do laundry. The hooker is sitting on his ass on the floor, wiping the back of his hand over his mouth. The bottom half of his face is wet and shiny, his lips red and swollen and there is a wry twist to them as Steve rips the condom off and throws it on the floor.
"I’ve met two-beer queers before, but never heard of a two-finger straight."
"Fuck you," Steve gasps and swings his legs to the side of the bed. They feel surprisingly rubbery and his cock is still ragingly hard as he tucks himself back in and buttons up.
The hooker clambers to his feet slowly, leaning heavily on the bed. One knee seems too stiff to bend properly and Steve wonders why the man ever got down on the floor if it was so damned hard on him.
"You can, if you want. That’s included in the price."
The guy straightens up and holds his hands out to the side as if to advertise the package. There is a mean little smile on his face and Steve can feel Blondie despising him from across the bed. He would blame the alcohol and the long week for what he does next, but he knows it’s from a place a lot deeper and darker than that. He lunges for the hooker, wanting to do nothing more than beat that look off his face, punch some respect onto that smirk.
There's a fast move not his own, and then Steve is face down on the worn carpet with a hefty weight between his shoulder blades. He thinks he could break the hold on his wrist and knock the little bastard across the room. Maybe. On the whole, punching would've been more fun, but the hooker has some muscle on him. He looks like he knows how to take a punch and send it back with interest. Steve is just not-drunk enough to know that he is not on top of his game. The guy’s straddling him now and has a grip in his hair, ready to smack his head into the floor.
"Slow. Take your time and make your decision about this, my friend. You don't want to mess with me."
The ratty carpet is scratching his cheekbone. His shirt has ridden up and there are some plenty sensitive spots it's digging into. The man on his back isn't helping, but he can't seem to bring himself to care. "Yeah?" Steve asks, "What were we just doing? Talking about the weather?"
"Oh, hell, yeah." To his surprise, the hooker barks out a laugh. "I heard there's gonna be some hard rain tonight." The guy has straddled Steve's hips and is pinning him to the floor with his not-insubstantial weight. "Slow down, He-man. You don’t get to leave marks and I don’t do pain - for either of us. If that’s what you’re into, you can take it right out the door."
Steve can feel himself panting, his breaths laboring a little under the guy who has him pinned. "No," he says, and doesn’t know what he’s saying no to. But he feels the grip on his wrist loosen slowly and then release him. The weight on his back shifts and then there are hard hands gripping his shoulders and. . . massaging them.
Unrelenting thumbs have begun to dig out the lines of knotted muscle down his back. It feels unbelievably good; he’s been strained like a guy wire for six weeks or more. He should be bucking the guy off and kicking his ass out the door, maybe with a split lip for a tip. Instead, he hears himself exhale and it feels like he settles more into the floor. There are hard-muscled thighs like a hot welt across his back and strong hands working the two parallel lines of steel cable along his spine. He sighs with relief as the pain eases.
"If you promise to be a good boy, I’ll let you up and we can do this on a nice soft bed," the hooker says. But neither of them moves. Steve’s blanking. Honestly, who the hell reacts to someone about to beat the shit out of them by giving him a massage?
Those knowledgeable hands have worked their way up his back, straight up his neck and onto his scalp. Alarm bells finally begin to clang in his head but get muffled as the headache he's had since March begins to slip away. "Fuck you," he mumbles belatedly.
"Already told you, it’s on the menu," the guy says and it sounds like he’s smiling a little. "You maybe got a complex? Dick problems?"
He's going to bust Kamekona's balls for this. Procuring, pimping, whatever. Or maybe just for fucking with Steve McGarrett's head. If they don't get out of here soon, he won't be capable of driving home. Or looking at himself in the mirror. "I . . . will you come home with me?"
"You must be out of your mind." A genuine laugh from the hooker. "I like to keep my skin in one piece, thanks, and I don't do that by being ambushed in strange places. You look like just the kind of closet case who'll try to carve me up when you're done. You wanna fuck, we can do that, but it happens here."
Steve is genuinely horrified, more than he was when he found out this guy's mouth was the thing he wants most. "Just . . . let me up, I've got money, but I can't do this here." He's got to get out of this awful place, where he feels like the worst kind of trash, some kind of . . . user, john, nobody. He feels like there's soot clinging to his skin. God only knows what's in this carpet, but it can't be as bad as what's in his head. He wonders what it would be like to have those I-beam thighs locked around his waist because he's fucking the guy up the wall, not because he's pinned to the floor.
"See? You didn't even know that's what you wanted, and now you want me to . . ." The man stops suddenly, his hands falling to his sides. It’s like hearing a piece of tech shut down, hearing the speakers fade out. "I told you - I've already been paid. You want it, it's here or nothing."
Those hot hands move away and the man clambers off of Steve’s back. Steve pushes himself up to his hands and knees and then stops, punched in the gut by the mere idea of driving his cock into the hard body that just had him pinned to the floor. Just the thought of the man's taut ass is giving him visions. . . his cock sliding so, so slowly into that tight opening, muscular cheeks pressed against his shaft, the blond groaning his name.
Or. . . wiping away the blond man’s sneer by coming so hard down his throat that he’s choking on it. Steve's dizzy with possibilities he never dreamed of before tonight.
He isn’t on active duty any more. There is no one to ask or tell or to engage in moral debate. He hasn’t had a meltdown like this in years. He needs to do something crazy and his old team isn’t around to take him out to a bar in Singapore, Belfast or Capetown and get him so drunk he can’t remember his name, rank and serial. His new team isn’t much for drinking and he can’t imagine Chin and Kono taking him out to the sleaziest bars for a hard drunk-and-fuck night.
They’re not his buddies. They work for him. That's all they do.
Suddenly all he wants to do is slide his cock between those sarcastic lips; he wants to fill that tight, angry mouth. Or even just scrub his dick up against those washboard abs until he sprays spunk all over him.
While his head is reeling, the hooker examines him more closely. "You're not just some sweet little military boy, are you? You're a badge."
"No!" Steve's never had cause to or interest in lying about what he does. All he wants is some more time. "No, I -- Navy, lifer, I just --"
"Nah, I know what I'm looking at when I see it. I never thought Kamekona would send me somebody who'd bust my ass when it's time to check out." Blondie's look is filled with disgust. "Or my jaw." The guy's backed off, lets Steve twist up to stare at him.
"Look, I, I don't know what you want me to say, I just need . . ." He's a giant, aching pit of need. Even if he could say what, he wouldn’t tell. Not the haole hooker. How did one blow job -- admittedly, a hell of a good one -- and a shoulder massage do this to him?
"Someone to screw through the mattress?"
" . . . yeah."
And a lot of other things. Steve's not sure what they are; he just knows that he truly, desperately needs them. Maybe this guy knows. Maybe he should have tried to find somebody before this . . . before K pitied him enough to buy him a hooker. If some random prostitute isn't who he should be with right now, it's who he's got. He sure as shit doesn't want anybody else to see him like this.
"So what’s it gonna be?"
He swallows with a dry throat and chooses. "Whatever. We'll stay here." In this anonymous room with its ugly curtains and stained carpet, he'll take whatever he can get from someone who couldn't give a rat's ass about him.
He strips off his tee shirt with one hand. The hooker is watching him warily; someone taught the man to fight. He is standing with his knees shoulder-width apart, weight evenly balanced and ready to defend himself. Their eyes meet for a moment and Steve tries a half-smile in apology. It seems to be good enough because the guy yanks off his own tee shirt and tosses it on the chair beside him. The still-recent scar of a bullet wound on his chest looks like it should’ve been fatal, Christ, what did the guy do that won him that thing? Then he casually steps out of his jeans and Steve’s hands stutter to a stop on his fly.
The man is short; he barely comes up to Steve’s shoulder. But he’s muscular and well-formed. Steve could run his thumb along the definition down his chest, around his ribs, across his abdomen. He knows he’s purposefully not looking at the guy’s crotch, which is stupid. He’s been in locker rooms since he was ten, it’s not like he hasn’t seen dicks aplenty. But this is the first time he’s looking at one attached to the guy that just sucked him halfway out of his mind. A trail of light brown hair leads down from the mat on his chest, all the way down to a short, thick, cut cock that’s not fully hard.
"What do you want me to call you?" the guy asks.
The only name that comes to Steve’s mind is his middle name. "John."
The hooker grins, sharp and sunny, for just a moment. "No, really?"
Steve has to smile back. He shrugs and drops his eyes to watch his fingers unbutton his own jeans. Broad nimble fingers take over, pushing his hands to the side.
"You can call me Ray."
And Steve (John, he reminds himself) watches Ray’s hands unbutton him and slide those jeans down again. He shouldn’t be, but he’s getting hard again already. It’s been months since he’s had sex and weeks since he’s given himself a little relief and he’ll take anything at this point. That’s what he tells himself, as Ray lets his hands linger on Steve’s hips and rubs lightly with his thumbs. Somehow, Steve had never found those two patches of skin to be as crazy sensitive as they are right now.
When he raises his eyes to Ray’s face, there is something both calculating and kind in those blue eyes. Without thinking, Steve leans down to kiss him.
"Whoa, cowboy, no kissing," Ray says and turns his head. Steve’s lips trail down a day’s worth of blond stubble instead and he is simultaneously irritated and turned on. Slick teeth nip at his collar bone; then there’s a string of hot open-mouthed kisses trailing down to his left nipple.
"I thought you said," he gasped, "no kissing."
"Not," kiss "on," another kiss, "the lips." A hard suck on his nipple has Steve arching like a cage dancer. "Everywhere else is fair game, though." Ray grins again and switches nipples.
Ray doesn’t just kiss. He bites. He uses his mouth like a weapon and he's tearing Steve apart. He can hardly bear to hear his own groans and cries. "Wait, wait," Steve chokes, pulling away. It's too much. His hand cups Ray's cheek, stroking lightly. "Can't stand it."
Ray's head rests for a moment against Steve's sternum and he can feel Ray's breath, warm against his damp skin. Ray raises his head, wide smile with a soft, "Sure, John. I got you."
Steve almost wishes he would go back to biting; that was more honest than this easy compliance. When Ray says, "Fuck me, John, it'll be good, don't you want to fuck me?" Steve says, "Yeah. Yeah."
When Ray's heat closes around him, it's nothing he ever wanted and everything he needed so badly. When he shoves mindlessly into that clinging body and slides back out, every nerve in his body is Code Red for the next push.
It’s overwhelming, and not nearly long enough before it’s over. It could never be long enough. He doesn’t want it to end. He hasn’t felt pleasure like this in forever, feels like never. No, no, he thinks, not now, and he should have crushed the hopeless noise he lets slip as he comes, but he can’t think any more.
Steve wakes from his doze to the sound of the door closing gently. He's only disoriented for a moment before vaulting out of bed and slipping into his pants. He slips out the door after kicking one of his discarded boots into the jam to keep it from locking behind him. He pads rapidly down the walkway and peers around the edge of the building. There is a flash of blond under a sodium vapor light as the hooker crosses from the motel to the nearly empty bar parking lot. A minute later, with the purr of an engine, a light-colored late model Camaro pulls out of the bar lot and away from the motel.
It's too far for Steve to get a look at the plate. The orange lights disguise the real color of the car. With an odd sense of dejection, Steve turns and goes back to the room. He pulls on his shirt and shoves his feet into his boots. He checks his wallet. Everything's still in it. There's a key-card left on the nightstand and Steve debates for a long minute about whether he ought to take it and run the prints. Then he just shakes his head at himself, wipes his own key-card clean and leaves it beside the other one.
^^^
Danny opens his mouth to tell Kamekona that Mr. Repressed wanted to fuck him up last night instead of just fuck him, but he doesn't. It seems too personal. Which is stupid, because there's nothing personal about it. "Okay, big man, who was that asshole last night?"
"Oh, you no like? I thought you maybe get along."
There's genuine disappointment on K's face and Danny stares. "Yeah, right, best buddies. That's what sex for cash is all about, my brother."
"He been good fren' long time. Sad about his daddy, wen die couple months back." K hands him a red shave ice, brightens a little. "You go see him again?"
"Not in this lifetime."
Still, he's glad for K's help. Christ, without him, Danny'd be alone here -- or worse yet, back in Jersey dying for a single glimpse of Grace. And he's so damned grateful to have escaped that shithole he used to live in. His clients generally aren't trying to kill him.
"Thanks, anyway."
"No problem, brah. Get one good day, eh."
The truth? Every day in Hawaii is a good day. He learned to meditate while he was in the hospital and recovering from losing a chunk of lung. It was the only thing that kept him sane. He’d been so consumed by anger, there’s no telling what would have happened otherwise. Still, there are no fond memories of Los Angeles or its police department.
He eats his shave ice standing at the waterline, letting the happy shrieks of tourists wrap around him while the wild feet of kids throw stinging sand everywhere. He likes the water here. It's not like the treacherous waters where he used to live.
It wasn't even the bullet that took him down; he could've lived with that. One scared kid fucked up. Off-duty when he heard the call, Danny arrived on the scene in street clothes, never thinking he might draw fire from the good guys. It was a melee, a total clusterfuck. He didn’t hesitate to pull his weapon. Then there was a motion on his right, a terrified young voice shouting, “Gun!” and that was all she wrote. That part was an accident. Stupid, almost fatal, yeah, but shit happened.
The way his compatriots dropped him like a rock, that was what hurt. He lets the shave ice wash away the bad taste in his mouth.
He’d hated Rachel for dumping his ass and moving Grace away, hated her with all his considerable passion, until he found out what real betrayal was. An investigation cleared the Commissioner’s nephew of wrongdoing, naturally. The kid didn’t get so much as a slap on the wrist. Danny lost his life’s work and his reverence for the criminal justice system to a half-trained little shit and a conference table full of smug superior officers.
He moved to LA from Jersey in the first place because there weren't any openings on the islands, and he needed to be closer right the fuck now. Three months without seeing his little girl had already left him wild-eyed with rage and loss. The price of airfare every couple of weeks was as much as his new salary could cover, but it had to be enough.
Then he got shot and there was never enough. On a 60% pension, well, 60% of not much was even less. The endless time he spent recuperating alone just about killed him, and then the only option was to pack up and go. The only people who’d come to visit in the hospital were Rachel and Grace, a couple times, and his partner, Meka. He understood why when his commanding officer said, “I don’t think a desk job is right for you, do you, Danny?”
Fucking bastards. He’d only worked there eighteen months, and in their minds, he was already gone. They wanted him gone. They got him shot, and that made him a black eye.
“You’re a good officer. The best,” Meka said. “They didn’t know you, Danny. You kept to yourself.”
Like that was a crime. He’d had other things to do besides socialize. And. . . well, just maybe his big mouth had something to do with it.
A desk job might even have been bearable, and he knew he could have insisted, but no. He’d never work for or with these people again. In the end, he took the cash they offered -- not a payoff, no, and God only knew where they got the money from; it couldn’t be on anybody’s books. He put it away for Grace. Whatever happened next, he wanted to provide something for his little girl.
Those bastards got him shot and then paid him to go away. That hurt worse than the bullet.
He headed to Oahu to work at whatever he could. Honolulu prices made Los Angeles look like a bargain, but he'd have taken any shit job. And he had.
Except there was the woman in the bar the night after he quit Matson Security. It had been a graveyard shift job, paid all right, but walking around the docks all night was hell on his knee. He was afraid that pretty soon he’d have to go back for more knee surgery. His health benefits were almost worthless. They wouldn’t hire him at Starbucks. Hell, he’d applied to be a grocery checker.
He spent most of that day in bed unable to sleep, looking down the barrel of losing his baby girl. He was thinking he might not be able to make it here, and his only choice was to go back to Jersey. If he did, he’d have to ask his mom and dad for the airfare home.
He didn’t know what to do anymore. And then . . . the woman in the bar.
She was alone, lovely, maybe forties or early fifties, with the kind of subtle enhancement that only real money could buy. She picked him up -- not a completely new experience for Danny, but close enough to make him pink a little with pleasure. She noticed. "You must be new here."
She meant something else, but Danny didn't realize it at the time. "Fresh off the boat," he said.
"Oh, good."
Lauren was a divorcee from New York, here with friends, and it was a wild week. They were off getting ripped at some luau, but she had to leave early in the morning. She told him about her vacation; he told her he came down here for his daughter. They chatted companionably for a couple of drinks. Danny felt good. It was nice to know he could still turn a beautiful woman's head. He hadn't had a friendly conversation with a woman since his physical therapist, and she seemed more of the whips and chains variety.
Then Lauren said she had to head upstairs to bed. Danny, ever the gentleman, offered to show her to her room. He showed her that, and a lot more. It was intense. Danny made sure of it. He couldn't be a cop any more; he was half-crippled and completely lost in this strange place, but he still knew his way around a woman. Rachel had trained him well and he’d loved the practical exams.
He woke up bathed in the first rays of sun through the east-facing windows and gave away the rest of his loneliness. She took it, giving him her body in return. After she left in a flurry of kisses, he showered and dressed. He picked up his sport coat, mystified by the bulge in the breast pocket. I didn't have a handkerchief, he thought, and pulled out a thousand dollars in fifties.
That was how it started, his new career.
That day he leaves his tiny apartment. If he doesn’t do this, he can’t afford it anyway and he’ll be back in Jersey. He gets a temporary room in a crappy motel in Kalihi; no need to impress anybody. He doesn't have any savings left, anyway. The divorce, moving to LA and traveling to Hawaii ate it up. Tourists have their own rooms, and if he wants, he can take the bus into Waikiki. Parking there costs a small fortune. He needs time to look around for something cheap but decent. If this works.
The place is conveniently situated next to a bar, which he intends to make good use of that night. He just took money for sex. He’s thinking about trying to do it again. He already needs a drink. That’s how he meets Kamekona.
"Time to go home, brah." The enormous bald bartender is hanging over his head like a baseball bat.
"What?" He's drunk, but not drunk enough to kick out of a lowlife bar. The last time that happened was ten years ago, and it was more about the shamrocks they were painting on the other patrons. Tonight, he’s been quiet, kept to himself and gotten on with the important business of drinking. "I got money,” he growls. “You have to serve me."
"You scaring da clientele away." Sure as shit, the place was near empty on a Friday night at 11. "We don't need no po-lice in here. I give yo’ money back, you go down to the station bar by Queens, eh. Ass da rules. You no come here less we call. No need fo' trouble."
"You think I’m a cop?” There's something in his throat, but Danny hawks it out with a laugh. It sounds unconvincing, even to him. "I am not a cop any more. The glorious brotherhood of the LAPD chewed me up and spit me out. They did not need me among their ranks, and I have the bullet hole to prove it."
He's drunk enough to start unbuttoning his shirt. The barman is waving meaty hands, no, no, but Danny forges on. "This, Mr. Really Big Bartender, is the most enduring memento of my many years as a cop. I learned you don't get in between the good guys and the bad guys in a gunfight. At least not if they let the Commissioner’s nephew ride along with the SWAT team.”
He leans closer and speaks confidentially, knuckles white on the placket of his shirt, pulling it open over the ugly scar. "But I showed them. I got a new line of work. Looks like I'm an escort now." For a horrifying moment Danny has to look down when he feels his eyes burn. He pulls out a fan of fifties. "See? Met a very nice lady last night."
The giant behind the bar stares at him long and hard, and he's not the dumbass Danny thought he was. Because he pulls another beer and sets it in front of Danny. While he's polishing a perfectly clean, dry glass, he says conversationally, "I know lotsa nice ladies."
And Danny’s new career is off to a fine start.
Danny doesn't want to know anything about his clients, or at least he didn't expect to when he started. After he gave up the idea of foaming lattes at Starbucks or policing the Hilton, he thought he'd be doing the tourist trade, and he does.
There are sweet white haired ladies longing for a little excitement and Japanese businessmen with their Seiko watches. Danny doesn't look like a hooker; he looks like hotel security wearing the dark jacket and the white dress shirt open at the neck. Sometimes he even wears a tie. That's why the nice hotels let him trick in their bars if he spreads it around.
That, and he has a personal relationship with every concierge in town.
But when you have repeat business, and it's Kamekona's friends or family, you get to know them a little. It's bizarre, but okay. Helps him feel at home in this insane situation. He never imagined any of this. He can't think about it or he starts to get short of breath -- heart pounding, blood pressure rattling in his ears. He inhales hard and uses what he learned from the skinny, wrinkled monk in USC Hospital’s next bed.
Kamekona’s trying to get him screwed, but unlike the LAPD, it’s with Danny’s full participation. And he gets something out of it besides an ignominious early retirement. Danny still needs every moment of meditation he can get for enough focus to cope some days. He was a good cop, and now he's a criminal, but Kamekona's people treat him like he's their own. He doesn't think about that, either, as he eats his red shave ice and watches the blue waves roll in.