Burn this City by Aleksandr Voinov
24
Jack Barsanti was a fucking mess and Sal loved it. Whatever stuff the doc had shot straight into his blood had changed everything. And despite how fucked up Barsanti was, he still remembered everything. Every detail. Every name. Numbers—fuck, the guy had a mind for numbers and could recite passwords, phone numbers, account numbers and even balances down to the cent. At first, Sal had been skeptical that a man, who at times looked around with rolling eyes as if struggling to recognize where he was, could correctly recall account numbers, but when he looped back after an hour and asked for that account again, he got the same answer.
What kind of man kept the really important information exclusively in his head? This one did. And, well, it made sense. It was a place the Feds would find a lot harder to raid, because to Sal’s knowledge, the Feds relied on leverage that didn’t come in a small glass bottles.
What impressed him most was how Jack’s words remained understandable throughout, though he could get vague and muddled and wander off the point, adding details that seemed to come so far from left field that he and Enzo had looked at each other, puzzled, but the doc seemed less surprised. Same with the pauses he needed before responding—they seemed a little longer than even for a thoughtful answer, but again, whenever Sal grew impatient, the doc told him that was to be expected.
Jack seemed drunk or overly tired to Sal, except for that sharpness of recollection, and the mix was weird.
“That’s quite the truth serum.”
“Nah, it’s a happy side effect. He could still lie, but lying is a pretty complex process, and we derailed him a lot. Also, after that first session, the question is if he would still want to lie. So vote’s out.”
“What’s in that shit?”
“Based on ketamine. Ketamine is fun, you should try it.”
“I can’t for the life of me understand why you’d want to get so fucked up.”
“It’s really intense and pleasant.”
It seemed to help with the guilt and hesitation to sell his whole damn organization out, and also with whatever loyalty he felt to Andrea. What was interesting was the flatness with which he responded to questions—none of that tension or the constant attempts to out-think and out-race Sal, but also, it didn’t come with any suffering.
Sal felt his own exhaustion as the night pushed on; some small bites from the kitchen and shots of coffee could only do so much after all that intensity. While the doc offered to give him what he called an “upper”, he’d declined, because he needed his judgment intact and, frankly, seeing Jack Barsanti coming totally apart after an injection was another counter-argument. He needed his wits about him and while he liked the doc and was more than happy about the man’s contribution, he wasn’t going to trust him or offer his arm.
Any last lingering doubts that Jack was much more together than he pretended to be fled when he had to help him walk. But how they’d got from there to Jack insisting that Sal touch him and all but begging for sex was a mystery. And that resolute statement that it didn’t matter whether it was Sal or anybody else—it almost made Sal almost laugh, because after all that coyness and composure Jack had displayed, this was new. It was refreshing. And maybe, after everything he’d put Jack through, he owed him a handjob. It wasn’t like he wasn’t getting anything out of it. He loved the moment when the barriers came down, instinct took over, and needs and urges ran the show. It made him feel alive and needed.
But that kiss. Yeah, well, he was a kisser. He also kissed Enzo, though never casually or outside the bed. Jack wasn’t in a state to push him away, but he’d gotten really into the kissing, and it had been Sal who’d turned away in the end because he was too close to losing control. Jack on the couch, smelling of sex, blissed out and blurred around the edges and still uncoordinated hit several of his buttons—he could have lain down next to him and rested until they’d slept or recovered or both. Or he could have stripped him to the skin, pushed up his legs, and fucked him then and there. Or he could have rested first and then started again, seduced him and take that last bit of him that Sal wanted.
Control.
But he wanted Jack to feel it.
Alcohol, drugs, all of that could be good fun with a partner you knew well, but Sal wanted Jack Barsanti clear-eyed and with a clear mind. He’d ripped through the man’s defenses for information, but when it came to sex, that moment of surrender, of yielding was so much better if it was a choice. It already felt weird that Jack had been so startled by the kiss, seemed so tentative, so hesitant in those first few moments. It seemed he wasn’t a kisser.
Sal drew a deep breath while he watched Jack drift off, then shook his head. It would be at least two hours until Enzo returned, and unless he wanted to tie Jack up again, he couldn’t afford to sleep yet. Still, the man didn’t pose a threat now. He’d given up everything. He could possibly attempt to escape or fight back, though Sal didn’t expect him to do either.
A knife or gun was a great leveler, though, so better safe than sorry. Which meant the idea of having a cold shower to shock him awake was out. Too bad. His banked arousal made him restless, especially with Jack spread out temptingly like.
He forced himself to sit down with Barsanti’s phone and laptop, and typed “6823” into Barsanti’s phone. Interestingly, its content was pretty bare, and intentionally so. The mail app held about fifty emails in total—mostly confirmations of services Barsanti had booked, such as dry cleaning, or reservations for tables in restaurants, though he didn’t seem to entertain a lot. There were a couple bookings for two people, but it seemed Barsanti mostly ate alone. Meanwhile, the “Sent” folder was empty, and so were the ones for junk mail and deleted messages. An investment app told him that he had “new documents”, but it didn’t include a link, and Sal wasn’t that interested in how much Barsanti had in investments. Living in this kind of house and driving that kind of car outside, it was clear the man was comfortable. Some made men blew everything on sex and drugs, fast cars and mistresses, but Barsanti struck him as more circumspect.
No photos. Browser history cleared. Call history empty. Seemed Jack Barsanti relied entirely on that phenomenal memory of his. A text message from a number that was likely Beth’s: Tried to reach you, please call me back.
Sal called voice mail and listened to her. “Jack, this is Beth. I hope you’re well. I’ve had some time to sleep on it, and I think we should talk. I’m free tomorrow, so let me know. Please take care. Call me!”
She did sound worried but also tried to hide it, likely for Barsanti’s sake. Sal assumed Barsanti didn’t have the slightest clue how much Beth worried about him. While she obviously couldn’t know that her worries were more than justified, maybe some part of her did catch how serious the situation was. She seemed good at interpreting emotions.
A reading app, but flicking through the books didn’t flag anything special that would have attracted Sal’s attention. Seemed mostly business related. Barsanti’s music app had rock and pop music, a few jazz compilations, and again nothing special.
And, despite all of the many apps he could have had, not a single dating app. No hook-up apps, not gay, not straight, nor those that catered to both. Huh.
The extensive collection of Queen albums was possibly the only truly gay thing on that phone. Barsanti had been willing to die to protect this? Maybe the clues were on the laptop.
He opened it and typed in the password.
The background desktop was tidy, making him expect the worst, but while the mail app was synched to the phone and thus held nothing of any value, there were spreadsheets and text documents, though all of them were locked. Painstakingly, Sal had to match every single doc and spreadsheet to the long list of passwords Jack had given them. It was a long fucking list.
There they were, Andrea Lo Cascio’s business activities, at least one of the things they’d come for. These seemed to be only the legal businesses, or businesses made to look legal—whether they actually were was a different matter. But in any case, after a quick skim of the spreadsheets, Sal estimated Andrea Lo Cascio’s various interests were worth mid-eight figures. A lot of income would be cash, other inflows looked legal because the Lo Cascio would obscenely overcharge to account for their “fees” and “consulting”. There were letters to various lawyers about contracts and ongoing activities.
All of this would be useful when it came to picking the meat off the bones after neutralizing the Lo Cascio. Some of these cash flows would be redirected into Sal’s pockets, others would be leverage.
A while later, he closed the documents and opened the browser. He didn’t expect much going through the few bookmarks, but then scrolled down and hesitated over a familiar link. More than familiar. So, Barsanti didn’t use hook-up apps, he didn’t even like any YouTube videos, and wasn’t subscribed to anything, but that one saved link went to a large porn site. Mixed porn, so not in itself a problem.
Sal clicked on “log in” and was taken to a login screen. This was one of the sites that made him a pretty penny each month, and he now had access to Jack Barsanti’s email—and yes, it seemed Jack had used that one to register, because sending a password reset link to the man’s inbox worked.
Jack, Jack. You use a throwaway for that kind of thing.
Such a Generation X mistake to make.
Probably not such a big surprise that Barsanti had subscribed. The team had plastered Port Francis in virtual advertising, in part because it had tickled Catia to, as she’d put it, “walk incognito in Port Francis as its God-Empress of Porn.” As the site had grown, so had the money inflow, and then it was network effects all the way down. After the War, with his family suffering and on the retreat, Sal had doubled down on this site and others. The benefit was almost nothing about online porn or online high-stakes gambling and poker required any kneecapping. Without that money, going invisible would have destroyed his family, and Sal had dealt with those dinosaurs who’d disagreed with his strategy.
Sal reset the password and logged into Barsanti’s account, but this was where his lucky streak ended. Barsanti had cleared his browsing history, which should have been the end of it.
Would have been for anyone else.
But Sal pulled his tablet closer and switched it on. He went into Barsanti’s account details and pulled his user ID. Then he used the tablet to log into the site’s back end and fed the customer number in.
The site had started as Catia’s side project and was successful because the algorithm that suggested “what you might like” was top notch, all powered by a sophisticated tagging system. The system quickly learned a user’s preferences and ranked new content so it was almost impossible to miss out on anything that fit a specific kink or practice or body type, among many other criteria. After his big restructuring following the end of the War, most of Sal’s biggest cash cows now grazed happily and one hundred percent in cyberspace.
The back-end analytics functions were razor-sharp and originally meant to ensure they got enough of the most popular content, though users were probably not aware how much data they were giving the algorithm. Barsanti didn’t “like” or comment on anything, so the social features of the site were completely lost on him.
He visited very regularly at what Sal assumed were his bed times, stayed for ten to twenty minutes at most, and logged out. Sometimes he visited early in the morning, but there was no regular pattern to it.
Going by the tags associated with Barsanti’s profile, his tastes ranged widely, with a distinct lack of hits toward the heavier and exotic kinks on the spectrum.
Solo performances, couples and threesomes of a mix of body types and skin colors, though Sal felt there were very few twinks in the mix. It seemed he preferred the kind of ubiquitous and interchangeable, clean-cut muscular types, though he didn’t seem peculiar about age. Flavors ranged from sweet to harder, scenarios from seduction, gay for pay, straight “first times” (yeah, right) to “you scratched my car, now suck my cock”. He had about thirty most-played videos; the engine called it his “heavy rotation”, and Sal clicked on his most watched one.
It started without any preliminaries, both actors already naked. Both were dark-haired, in their thirties and forties respectively. It was one of the semi-professional offerings, which had both amateur charm and higher production values than two out-of-focus bodies slapping together in a badly lit motel room. Sal actually knew the couple—they were pretty prolific and made a decent living. Part of their appeal, beyond their nicely muscled bodies and sizeable cocks, was how clearly they were into each other. One of them, older and more tattooed, was kneeling on the bed in profile, lubing up his cock, while the younger partner scooted back. Then the fucking started, by turns slow and gentle and more passionate, with the older partner grabbing the younger guy’s throat in a show of possessiveness. He didn’t squeeze or choke him, just rested that large, powerful hand on his lover’s arching throat. Very sexy, especially when coupled with their noises and groans, and all their passionate kissing as they moved together.
Sal cleared his throat. Again, he couldn’t fault Barsanti’s taste.
If he’d had any doubt left about Barsanti’s sexuality, he now knew that Beth’s gaydar had been spot on.
And this explained so much about the man’s prodigious self-control and composure. If Barsanti had had to hide such a fundamental part of himself for so long, while the other men around him partied and snorted coke off the tits of their various mistresses, all that Barsanti could conceivably do was learn how to grin and look relaxed.
“You should have done okay. All the prison pussy you could want.”
And Sal had prodded and harassed Barsanti mostly because he’d blinked and he’d thought Barsanti was so bigoted that riling him up about gay prison sex would make him come out of his shell.
You pushed a gay guy around out of a sense of self-righteousness, Mr. Open-Minded Bisexual Boss.
Weirdly, Sal felt worse about taking jabs at Barsanti’s sexuality than about drowning and then drugging him. No doubt he needed his fucking head examined.
All of this kept Sal from falling asleep, even though an ache settled in behind his eyes that told him he was overly tired and needed rest because caffeine was no longer going to cut it.
After a while, Jack stirred next to him on the couch and cleared his throat.
Sal looked up and noticed that Jack was making an attempt to sit up and pull up his trousers. Was this going to be awkward?
“Shit.” Jack fought his trousers and nearly fell back, but he managed to get dressed, gripped the seat edge and an arm of the couch for balance.
“Where are you going?”
“Kitchen. I need …” He gestured, but Sal couldn’t parse the gesture. “Water.”
“I’ll get you a glass. Anything else? You hungry?”
“I can’t even tell.” Jack let himself sink back down.
“All right.” Sal stood, closed the laptop and slipped his tablet back into its sleeve. In the kitchen, he found a large glass and filled it with water, then added one of the ready-to-drink protein shakes from the bottom of the fridge and brought both over to the living room area, reasoning that the latter would be easy calories that didn’t require fine motor skills. Jack was checking his arm and prodding at a small bruise from the injection.
“Here.” He handed both to Jack, who sat up to reach for the glass first and placed the protein drink on the couch next to him. He’d pulled down his undershirt, but the dress shirt over it was open and still looked great on him.
“Thank you.” Jack must have been parched because he emptied the glass in seconds. “What in the devil’s name did you …” He gestured again.
“Doc tells me it was mostly ketamine. Though he put his own spin on it. Real boutique stuff you were treated to. How are you feeling?”
“Dizzy. Might be lack of food, though. Headache. Could be caffeine withdrawal.” He put the empty glass down on the table and opened the plastic bottle. “Light’s still glaring.” He nodded toward the gigantic windows opposite.
“Want me to close the shutters?”
“Please.”
There was no real need or urgency in that word, but it brought back memories of when there had been. Sal stepped up to the windows and adjusted the shutters, turning the bright day into a pleasant gloom inside.
For a while, Jack did nothing but sip his protein stuff, but he was starting to look a little livelier, a little clearer.
“I have to say one thing,” Jack said. “Your brand of compassion is among the weirdest I’ve ever seen.”
“You mean the handjob or that you still have all of your fingernails?”
Jack paused, either thinking about it or taken aback by the language. Surely not? “Both. Was that … what you wanted to do last night? When you touched me?”
Sal scoffed. “For starters, yeah.” He turned fully to face Jack and had to hold back from grabbing him, kissing him, making him squirm every way he knew how. He wanted to see that tight, defined, strong body take his cock, open up for him, and cling to him.
“Jesus.” Jack shook his head and laughed tonelessly. “That’s so … wrong. Everything about this is wrong.”
“I don’t give a fuck about your old-fashioned morality bullshit. I know you’re gay. You know I’m bisexual. I basically started our conversation with that.”
“‘Conversation’,” Jack echoed. “Right.”
“I needed what was in your head. To protect my people.”
“And destroy mine,” Jack shot back.
“Your people? The same people who’d kill you and chop you up if they knew you fuck men? Fucking listen to yourself.” Now he did walk up to Jack, who sat up straighter to offset at least some of the height advantage.
“And how’s that different from what you’re going to do?” Jack’s face softened and he rubbed his temple with one hand. “Besides, I don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“I don’t … fuck men.” He moved his lips like it was a sharp word that hurt his tongue. “Or let them fuck me. I don’t.”
What? None of that made sense. “Explain.”
“Well, you know everything else now, so why hide it?.” Jack swallowed visibly. “I never … I don’t have hook-ups. Nothing … casual or committed. When I realized what I am, I decided to never take that risk. Because I might decide it was worth dying for, or lose everything because I couldn’t control the temptation. It didn’t seem worth it.”
Fuck. And I called you a monk. “Are you telling me you’ve never had sex? I mean, sex involving another person? You’re, what, in your forties?”
Jack hesitated for a long time. “I’m just not like that. I’m different.”
“Different in what way?”
“I just don’t constantly look at people pondering whether I want to have sex with them. That seems to be the normal way? From what I’ve observed about others. I try not to think about it too much. I’m busy with other things.”
“Okay. I … I think I get that. But you get turned on.”
“Yes. It’s …” Jack sighed and shook his head again. “And you’re the first person in the world I’m talking to about this. It’s not constant, like it seems to be for others. I’m still … when I’m into something it’s … men, but I’m not constantly into something or someone.”
Okay, those were some unusual wires, but Sal had learned to take pretty much all sexualities in stride, from Catia’s “anything goes with anybody” to Enzo’s submissive flexibility and his own fantasies and kinks. When he initially met up with one of his couples, the conversation invariably turned to what everybody was into, and Sal was happy to play along with pretty much everything that came up. He’d quickly learned to go to those meetings with a mind so wide open it was more of a landscape.
“You were okay with what we did, though?”
“It confirmed what I suspected.” Jack looked up with a crooked little smile. “That, yes, I’d take unreasonable risks for it, and that maybe I made the wrong decision to keep it all locked away. I …” Another deep breath. “I can’t help but wonder what it might have been like.”
Might have been.He was thinking about death again. Sal tried to imagine a life without touch, whether sexual or intimate, and couldn’t. Being a consigliere was already a burden because of the responsibility and the power that came with the job. While it made Jack less vulnerable to attack since he didn’t have the weakness of a partner—like Sal had with Catia—who could betray him to his enemies or sell him to the Feds in return for WITSEC, it also meant he’d never had anybody to lean on, nobody to trust on that most fundamental level.
Did that make Jack Barsanti the most resilient man Sal knew? To get where he had without support or avenue for release, was unimaginable. He certainly had to be the loneliest fucking man on the planet.