NORTH AND SHAW: OUT OF OFFICE

SHORT STORIES FROM THE BOREALIS INVESTIGATIONS

GREGORY ASHE

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2020 Gregory Ashe

BAD BOYS AT THE RADIO GIRLS

This story takes place before Orientation.

1

SHAW COULDN’T EXACTLY remember where he had put the invoices.

“This is fucking ridiculous,” North said as he kicked a banker’s box away from him. “This is one hundred percent your fucking fault.”

“They’re around here somewhere.”

“That’s great, Shaw. Where?”

“I know I didn’t throw them away.” Shaw froze as soon as he had said this. “I mean—”

“Oh Christ. You read that book.”

“This doesn’t have anything—I mean, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I ought to drag your scrawny ass upstairs and show you what I’m talking about. I’m talking about that Marie Kondo spark-joy-and-throw-North’s-important-paperwork-away book. That book. The one I specifically told you not to read.”

“Oh. That one.”

North swept himself upright in his chair, the Red Wing boots coming down hard on the floorboards. “Oh,” he said, his voice pitched high. “That one. Yes, that fucking one. The one you’ve been talking about ever since you and Benny broke up six months ago. Like you’re going to organize your room because you’re not getting laid anymore.”

“Well, I was reading about this custom in parts of China of giving money in red envelopes and how it brings good fortune, and I was thinking that we needed a little good fortune, so then I thought maybe we should be sending out our invoices in red envelopes—”

“Oh my God.”

“—and then somehow I just had that Marie Kondo book in my hand. I swear. I don’t even know how it got there.”

“Oh my God.”

“But I thought I might as well take a look since I had it in my hands.”

“Oh my ever-loving God.”

“You know, I’m actually really good with paperwork. Cousin Rodney says I’d be a bang-up lawyer.”

“Bang-up?”

“It’s an expression.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“I think it’s British.”

“It’s not. And you’d be a fucking terrible lawyer.”

“Cousin Rodney doesn’t think so. He even said he’d give me a job.”

North buried his face in his hands and took a calming breath. Then, speaking between his fingers: “We’re getting a secretary.”

Some of Shaw’s hair had fallen in his face, and he shoved it away. “I don’t really think that’s necessary—”

“We’re hiring one. This week.”

“I’m not sure we can afford one.”

“I’ll quit.”

Shaw shoved more hair away and grinned. “No, you won’t.”

“I’ll hold you down and shave your head.”

That, Shaw had to admit, was frighteningly likely. North was very much the type to deliver on a threat like that. And Shaw wasn’t vain, not at all, he’d been reading all about how to see people’s spirits and how important that was, but he also was pretty sure he didn’t want to be bald.

“What if we compromise? I’ll find some red envelopes, and we can—”

North was starting to growl.

That was when the bell on the front door jingled, and before Shaw could say anything, North shot to his feet. “I’ll get it.”

While North spoke in low voices to whoever had come to the office of Borealis Investigations—a client, Shaw hoped, although it was more likely somebody wanting to sell tacky bracelets on display in the front office, or maybe a kid trying a paper route, or the gas guy who couldn’t find the meter—Shaw pulled open another desk drawer and started digging.

“Shaw?”

He looked up too fast, and his head cracked against the underside of the desk. “Ouch.” His face heated as he extricated himself.

North stood in the doorway, shaking his head. Next to him were two young women. Girls, really. Barely out of high school, if Shaw had to guess, although he’d never really been an expert on girls. One was tiny, with light brown skin, dark hair, and a vermillion bindi on her forehead. The other had peroxide-blond hair shorter than North’s, and her combat boots put her almost as tall as him. The two girls were holding hands.

“We have clients,” North said.

“Awesome,” Shaw said, but as he stood up, his foot caught on a stack of pages under the desk, and Shaw slipped and fell backward, landing on the floor. He took a moment to clear his head and then looked at the mountain of paperwork that had tripped him up.

“Oh! North! I found the invoices!”

North just sighed.

2

THE STORY WAS SIMPLE, although unusual: a bunch of bros was invading a local lesbian bar—the Radio Girls.

“Tune in Tokyo?” Shaw said as they drove east on Gravois. “That kind of radio?”

In a strip mall parking lot, where neon signs flashed for payday loans and liquor stores, a flock of plastic bags fluttered in the fall breeze, cycloning up against a cart corral and then fluttering back to the ground. Shaw cranked down the Grand Caravan’s window—the smell inside the old minivan was worse today, reminding him of mold under a bath mat—and the wind came off the Anheuser Busch brewery heavy with hops.

“What?” North was studying the street signs.

“Never mind.”

Pari and Chuck—the girls who had hired them to find a way to get the bros out of the bar—were waiting outside Radio Girls when they pulled up. They were still holding hands. Chuck looked about five feet taller than Pari with those combat boots, but from the way Pari tugged and Chuck trotted, Shaw guessed the combat boots weren’t really giving Chuck much of an advantage.

“Mom’s inside,” Pari said. “She’s really the one you need to talk to.”

“And you can stay,” Chuck said, her voice pleasantly husky. “Those fuckers will show up tonight, I’d bet on it.”

On the outside, Radio Girls didn’t look much different from the welding shop on one side or the bike repair shop on the other. Its gravel lot had only a pair of cars in the late afternoon—a Subaru, of course, and a Prius. The only real giveaway was the neon sign that showed a woman’s figure, back arched, breasts up, one leg stuttering an on-off kick, and the name of the bar. On a side street off Gravois, nobody was going to wander here.

“They picked this place on purpose,” Shaw whispered as he followed North through the door.

North nodded.

Inside, the dark wood and patched vinyl and splintered parquet dance floor could have come and gone in a million other bars and never been noticed. The touch here, the one that told Shaw this wasn’t his scene, was old movie memorabilia. Hollywood starlets mostly, pictures of famous, beautiful women in cinema going back to silent films. There were three bars, and Shaw found himself wondering if this place did enough business to keep the doors open. Aside from the couple in the corner—a pretty woman just shy of middle age, linen pencil skirt, powder blue cardigan; her companion was much, much younger with a buzz cut and a Volcom shirt and a chain wallet (Shaw wanted to sigh)—the only other occupants were two women behind the bar on the other side of the room.

“Not really what I was expecting,” North muttered, dropping back to walk at Shaw’s side.

“More leather? Pictures of busty blondes on Harley Davidsons?”

“Ha ha.”

“I think you’d be comfortable here. You’re just so tough and manly.” Shaw tugged on North’s work shirt, the kind a mechanic or gas station attendant might wear, with the patch on the chest that said Bud in a looping script. “You could probably help them change the oil or something.”

“Christ, you’re funny.”

“I think Chuck might be willing to lend you her boots. You guys could swap. Think about it: you could double your wardrobe!”

The boots touched a real nerve, and North huffed and pulled ahead, muttering, “You don’t have to be an asshole.”

At the bar, two women were waiting for them. One was obviously Pari’s mother: the same light brown skin, the same dark eyes, although her glistening hair was cut into a neat bob. The other woman was a blonde, the sides of her head shaved, the top long and spilling pink tips into her eyes. Shaw was starting to have an idea of what Pari looked for in a woman.

“I’m Daksha,” Pari’s mother said, shaking hands with them. “This is Bud.”

“Like your shirt,” Shaw whispered.

North elbowed him so hard that Shaw thought he might have cracked a rib, and Bud must have overheard—or noticed the nametag—because she crushed Shaw’s hand when she pumped it.

“They started coming in here about ten days ago,” Daksha said, wiping her hands on a towel; she smelled like fresh-cut limes when she put a Coke in front of Shaw. “They just showed up. Twelve of them. Fifteen.”

“Fifteen the last time they came in,” Bud said. “Twelve the first time.”

“The bros are multiplying,” North said, his thumb gliding up and down the neck of his Schlafly. “Do they cause trouble?”

“They’re a bunch of douchey white guys in a lesbian bar,” Bud said. “That is the trouble.”

Daksha sighed. “They take up a few booths right near the east bar. They’re loud. They laugh. They’re obviously laughing at us. But they never do anything that would be a legitimate reason to kick them out. They don’t say anything offensive, not to our faces. But they’ll go out on the dance floor and try to get women to dance with them, and then they go back and explode laughing.”

“It’s fucking up the whole vibe.”

“So kick them out,” North said. “You don’t have to have a good reason.”

“We tried that,” Daksha said. “They threatened to sue us. They’re in law school, and they say it won’t cost them anything. Wouldn’t matter even if it did. These kids, they’ve got tons of money—you can tell that just looking at them. I don’t have any idea if I can legally kick them out of the bar, but I don’t think it matters.”

“Of course it matters,” Shaw said.

“This place,” Daksha gestured to the bar, and another whiff of fresh lime carried in the air. “Lesbian bars aren’t exactly overwhelmed with customers, and we skate by on a slim margin. It wouldn’t matter if we won or lost a civil suit; they could put us out of business just with the lawyer’s fees.”

North looked at Shaw. Shaw nodded.

“Let’s get rid of some douchey bros,” North said.

3

BY SEVEN, a crowd was beginning to build in Radio Girls. By eight, it was a decent throng for a weekend night in a lesbian bar. At least, that’s what North thought. He’d never been in a lesbian bar before—and fuck Shaw, he thought absently, for those stupid jokes—but this was more business than he’d expected.

By nine, the bros were there. Thirteen of them tonight. All of them white. All of them wearing clothes that looked casual but had doubtless cost a fortune—North knew because he had gone to Chouteau College with this exact same caliber of bro, and he knew because he’d never had any money. They were loud. They laughed and high-fived and bumped fists and bumped chests and shouted and drank and drank and drank and shouted some more. They crowded around the booths near the east bar, just as Daksha had said, until the women in those seats grew irritated enough to leave, and then they spilled onto the banquettes, laughing and cheering and drinking and bumping fists.

Thirteen of them. North figured he could get three out of commission before the others realized what was happening. He wasn’t Rambo or Bruce Lee—there was probably some more current action-hero analogy, someone played by Jason Statham or Vin Diesel or the Rock, but it just wasn’t coming to North right then—but he had gotten in fistfights with Chouteau boys before. He’d been brawling while they’d been learning to stroke or sit a horse or speak Mandarin. Shaw could probably take out three before the rest of them got going. But that would leave ten, and ten guys, even ten bros like these, could still beat two broke-ass detectives.

“I think we could just talk to them,” Shaw said, bouncing on his stool, his eighteenth Coke sloshing in his hand. “I think if we explained how much this was upsetting the women, if we just made it clear—”

“They know how much it’s upsetting them. That’s part of the game.”

Shaw was squirming so hard he was about to slide off the stool. “I know, I know, but I don’t think they really understand. I don’t think they really get it. I think if we just—”

“You’re wired.”

Shaw tried to settle down. It was obvious. And after about fifteen seconds, he started wriggling again.

“No more,” North said, taking the Coke and setting it behind the bar.

“I’m fine, I’m totally fine, I’m just excited about the chance to help these guys open their eyes, really open their eyes and understand—”

“All right,” North said, checking his watch. It was half-past eleven, and the bros were starting to get sloppy. “Let’s go talk to them.”

The leader was a blond guy with a Romney boy haircut. He was waving a draft beer at the other bros, punctuating his story with dramatic sweeps of the glass, splashing beer all over the table in the process. When he noticed North and Shaw, he paused, his brain trying to paddle through the booze, and then he grinned. “Hey. Hey! We’ve got a bet going about you guys. We saw you. We saw you guys sitting over there. And we’ve got a bet going. We’ve got a bet about whether you—” He punched the glass toward Shaw. “—whether you’re a girl or a tranny because, you know, the hair. And that fucking face.” He burst into howls of laughter, the other bros aped his laugh.

North could feel his knuckles pop as he made fists. He felt a smile growing on his lips.

“Ok,” Shaw said, bouncing on his toes, the eighteen Cokes making his words shoot out machine-gun style. “Ok, hey, not cool, not cool, the tranny thing, you’re not even supposed to say that anymore. But I don’t think you realize how much you’re upsetting the people here, and I know you wouldn’t do this, wouldn’t try to make them upset, if you knew that. I just wanted to talk to you about that. Maybe I could buy you guys some drinks, just kind of talk it out, and then you can go.”

“Oh my God, oh my God,” the Romney boy said. “You’re not even a tranny, are you? You guys are here, like some kind of—Buck, what’s the word?”

Buck. North wanted to roll his eyes, but all he could feel was the smile stretching his cheeks and the taut skin over his knuckles.

“Solidarity,” Buck said and then belched.

“Yeah. Fuck yeah, Buck. You guys are here in some kind of solidarity, right? You guys are like, what? Fags? And these are your hags?” Another round of laughing and clinking glasses and bumping fists. “Dude, no homo, but you are definitely not my fucking type.”

For a moment, the punch was crystal clear in North’s head: the force of the impact rippling through this Romney boy’s jowls, then the follow-up, the glass crunching under North’s hand as he smashed it against the bro’s face.

But he didn’t throw the punch. And he didn’t grab the glass.

“You guys need to go.”

“Fuck off, faggots,” Romney boy said, his voice turning hard and menacing. “Or do you need us to make you fuck off?”

Still bouncing on his toes, Shaw said, “I just think if I could talk—”

North grabbed his arm and hauled him toward the bar.

“Hey,” Romney called, “you, yeah, the blond one. You can do better than him. You know that, right?”

North had reversed course without even realizing it; he didn’t notice until he couldn’t move, until he saw that Shaw had double handfuls of the work shirt and was straining to hold him in place.

“Not worth it,” Shaw said. “Drop it.”

Howls of laughter chased them back to the bar.

“They just need to know how badly they’re hurting people,” North muttered as he flagged Bud and motioned for another Schlafly.

“Ok,” Shaw said. “I was wrong about that. But I thought it was very impressive how you channeled the Incredible Hulk and tried to smash him.”

North tilted the fresh beer and drank heavily.

“No, really,” Shaw said. “Forget about professionalism, forget about the client, forget about the job we have to do. When your macho pride activates, nothing else matters.”

Still drinking, North gave him the finger.

“Thank you for defending my honor.”

With a sigh, North set down the beer, still flipping the bird, and met Shaw’s eyes. “Done?”

Shaw mimed zipping his lips. Then he grinned.

At two, the bros left, piling into a series of Ubers and vanishing off to Clayton high-rises, Central West End lofts, Washington Avenue condos. Shaw and North watched them go and jotted down license plate numbers.

4

THE FIRST UBER driver’s name was Karl. With a K. He emphasized that. As he drove them toward the Planetarium, he told them a long, involved story about his mother, his great aunt, and a man who bred German shepherds. It was obviously meant to be some sort of explanation for his name, but North had no idea what that explanation was. When he pulled up to the curb on the south side of Forest Park, however, he shook his head emphatically.

“No way, man. No way. I could lose my job.”

Shaw dragged North out of the car before he could argue.

It was chilly in the early October evening; they had waited almost a full day, operating under the assumption that the same drivers who had driven the bros the night before wouldn’t start work again until the next evening. The sky hardened into a purple crust at the horizon, cracked to the west by a thunderstorm.

It took two more tries before they got another of the drivers whose plates they had marked down the night before. Rasheed wouldn’t talk to them at all. When North tried, he turned up the music louder—Britney, bitch. Outside McConnell’s, North held the door open, arguing with Rasheed about whether or not Rasheed could tell them the names of the people who drove home—or at least the address. It wasn’t much of an argument, really. Rasheed just stared ahead, unmoving, until he dropped his foot on the gas and lurched away, the rear passenger door flapping like a broken wing.

“Asshole,” North shouted after him. Then, to Shaw, “He could have run over my foot.”

“Let’s get something to eat.”

So they each had a burger with the works at O’Connell’s, although Shaw peeled off the bun and put it in the paper basket with the fries and shoved them away.

“Paleo,” he said in response to the scowl on North’s face. “Our ancestors weren’t eating processed food like—”

North grabbed the basket and dumped the fries in with his own. He scooped up ketchup. He ate it. Loudly.

“Yeah,” Shaw said. “Please, go ahead. Help yourself.”

North grunted something and kept eating.

“I think Paleo would be great if you’d just give it a try. It’s really helped me with my food addiction, and I think you—”

This time, North made a noise that was definitely a growl and worked on the Bud Lite that sat in front of him. “Not tonight,” he said, setting down the beer. “No hipster bullshit tonight.”

“Paleo isn’t really a hipster thing. But thank you for expressing your feelings.”

North had to fight really, really hard not to dump the fries on Shaw’s man bun.

Their driver after dinner was Clarisse, who was spilling out of her seat and who laughed at everything they said. As she drove them toward Gravois and the Radio Girls, Clarisse asked about work, which North took as an opening to ask about her work.

“Sweetie,” she said, glancing into the rearview mirror to make eye contact with North, “I’ve got a baby, and I’ve got a husband in college. This job puts food on the table and covers the tuition. Why would I do something stupid like tell you where I took a fare?”

“We’ll pay you a hundred dollars,” North said.

Her round, shining face closed up, and she set herself forward a little more in the seat.

“Two hund—” North got that far before Shaw elbowed him.

“You know Radio Girls?” Shaw asked.

“I know it. I don’t go there if that’s what you’re asking. I’ve got a husband and a little girl.”

“I just want to know if you know it.”

“Yeah.”

“The guys you drove around last night, the ones you picked up, that’s not the usual clientele, right?”

“Everybody’s got their thing, sweetie. Everybody.”

“You know why they were there?”

Clarisse braked hard at the next light; on the corner, an abandoned Shell station had its sign for unleaded still fixed at $0.699, and Christ, North wondered when gas had ever been that cheap.

“Sweetie, I just drive them. I’ll drive anyone.”

“They go there to ruin the night for those women. They go there to make them feel bad about themselves. They go there to scare them. Did you ever know anybody like that, Clarisse?”

The Story Continues on BooksBarbecue!

Enjoyed this preview? ❤️ Do not stop here!

Read the complete book free online → 🔗

Continue reading now on BooksBarbecue and discover every page!

Love reading? Bookmark BooksBarbecue.com for more amazing books!

Happy Reading!