Patricia Cornwell - Hornet's Nest

"What's so wrong about it?" Axel liked the idea quite a lot, and wondered if it were remotely possible.

"See. A contradiction. That's not called being friends. That's called being laid," Brazil enlightened him.

"I'm not a piece of meat, nor do I care to be a one-night stand."

"Who said anything about one night? I'm a long-term kind of guy," Axel assured him.

Brazil could not help but notice the two guys with bulging muscles and tattoos, in greasy coveralls, drinking long-neck Budweisers, glaring at them as they eavesdropped. This didn't bode well, and Axel was so obsessed, he wasn't picking up on the stubby fingers drumming the table and toothpicks agitating in mean mouths, and eyes cutting, as plans were being made for the dark parking lot when the fags returned to their vehicle.

"My feelings for you are very deep, Andy," Axel went on.

"Frankly, I'm in love with you." He slumped back in his chair, and dramatically threw his hands up in despair.

"There. I've said it. Hate me if you want. Shun me."

"Puke," said Rizzo, whose visible tattoo was of a big- breasted naked woman named Tiny.

"I gotta get some air," agreed his buddy, Buzz Shiftier.

"Tommy, I think we should be smart and get out of here as fast as we can," Brazil suggested quietly, and with authority.

"I made a mistake and I apologize, okay. I shouldn't have come over and we shouldn't be here. I was in a mood and took it out on you. Now we're going to make tracks or die."

"So you do hate me." Axel was into his crushed, you have-deeply-wounded-me routine.

"Then you stay here." Brazil stood.

"I'm pulling your car up to the front porch, and you're going to jump in. Got it?" He thought of West again, and anger returned.

Brazil was looking around, as if expecting a gunfight any moment, and ready for one, but aware of his limitations. There were rednecks everywhere, all drinking beer, eating fried fish with tartar and cocktail sauces, and ketchup. They were staring at Axel and Brazil.

Axel saw the wisdom in Brazil getting the car by himself.

"I'll pay the bill while you do that," Axel said.

"Dinner's my treat."

Brazil was completely cognizant of the fact that the two big boys in coveralls were this very second out in the dark parking lot, waiting for the two queers. Brazil wasn't especially concerned by their erroneous impression of him and the choices he made in life, but he was not interested in having the shit beat out of him. He thought fast, and tracked down the hostess in the raw bar, where she was parked at a table, smoking and writing tomorrow's specials on a chalk board.

"Ma'am," he said to her.

"I wonder if you could help me with a serious problem."

She looked skeptically at him, her demeanor changing somewhat. Guys said similar words to her every night after they'd been through buckets of beer. The problem was always the same thing, and so easy to remedy if she didn't mind slipping off behind the restaurant for maybe ten minutes and dropping her jeans.

"What." She continued writing, ignoring the jerk.

"I need a pin," he said.

"A what?" She looked up at him.

"You mean, something to write with?"

"No, ma'am. I mean a pin, a needle, and something to sterilize it with," he told her.

"What for?" She frowned, opening her fat vinyl pocketbook.

"A splinter."

"Oh!" Now that she understood.

"Don'cha hate it when that happens?

This place is full of 'em, too. Here you go, sugar. "

She fished out a small sewing kit in a clear plastic box that she'd gotten from the last hotel some rich guy took her to, and she slid out a needle. She handed him a bottle of nail polish remover. He dipped the needle in acetone, and bravely retreated to the porch. Sure enough, the two thugs were prowling near cars, waiting. They lurched in his direction when they spotted him, and he quickly stabbed his left index finger with the needle. He stabbed his right index finger and thumb. Brazil squeezed out as much blood as he could, and smeared in on his face, which he then held in his hands, as if he were reeling.

"Oh God," he moaned, staggering down steps.

"Jesus." He fell against the porch railing, groaning, holding his disgusting, gory face.

"Shit." Rizzo had gotten to him, and was completely taken aback.

"What the fuck happened to you?"

"My cousin in there," Brazil weakly said.

"You talking about that fag you was sitting with?" asked Shifflet.

Brazil nodded.

"Yeah, man. He's fucking got AIDS, and he threw up blood on me! You believe that! Oh God."

He staggered down another step. Shiftier and Rizzo moved out of the way.

"It went in my eyes and mouth! You know what that means! Where's a hospital around here, man? I got to get to the hospital! Could you drive me, please?"

Brazil staggered and almost stumbled into them. Shifflet and Rizzo ran. They leapt into their Nissan Hard Body XE with its four-foot-lift oversized tires that spun rocks.

The next night, Monday, Blair Mauney III was also enjoying an agreeable meal in the Queen City. The banker was dining at Morton's of Chicago, where he typically went when business called him to headquarters. He was a regular at the high- end steak house with stained-glass windows, next to the Carillon, and across from First Presbyterian Church, which also had stained glass, only older and more spectacular, especially after dark, when Mauney felt lonely and in the mood to prowl.

Mauney needed no explanation from the pretty young waitress with her cart of raw meat and live lobster waving bound claws. He always ordered the New York strip, medium rare, a baked potato, butter only, and the chopped red onion and tomato salad with Morton's famous blue cheese dressing. This he downed with plenty of Jack Black on the rocks. Tomorrow he would have breakfast with Cahoon, and the chairman of corporate risk policy, and the chairman of the credit corp, in addition to the chairman of US Bank South, plus a couple of presidents.

It was routine. They'd sit around a fancy table in Cahoon's fancy Mount Olympus office. There was no crisis or even good news that Mauney knew of, only more of the same, and his resentment peaked.

The bank had been started by his forebears in 1874. It was Mauney who should be ensconced within the crown and have his black and white portrait regularly printed in the Wall Street Journal. Mauney loathed Cahoon, and whenever possible, Mauney dropped poison pellets about his boss, spreading malicious gossip hinting at eccentricities, poor judgement, idiocy, and malignant motives for the good in the world Cahoon had done. Mauney requested a doggie bag, as he always did, because he never knew when he might get hungry later in his room at the luxurious Park Hotel, near Southpark Mall.

He paid the seventy-three-dollar-and-seventy-cent bill, leaving two percent less than his usual fifteen-percent tip, which he figured to the penny on a wafer-thin calculator he kept in his wallet. The waitress had been slow bringing his fourth drink, and being busy was no excuse. He returned to the sidewalk out front, on West Trade Street, and the valets scurried, as they always did. Mauney climbed into his rental black Lincoln Continental, and decided he really was not in the mood to return to his hotel just yet.

He briefly thought of his wife and her endless surgeries and other medical hobbies, as he cataloged them. What he spent on her in a year was a shock, and not one stitch of it had improved her, really. She was a manikin who cooked and made the rounds at cocktail parties.

Buried somewhere deep in Mauney's corporate mind were memories of Polly at Sweetbriar, when a carload of Mauney's pals showed up for a dance one Saturday night in May. She was precious in a blue dress, and wanted nothing to do with him.