The Ventilator

Like most men, Det. Chandler Raymond had a tendency to sleep like the dead after he’d fucked the spleen out of someone. Patrick Blair was never more grateful for that fact than when his phone rang.

It was two thirty-seven a.m. There was only one person who ever called Patrick that late. Well, two people, but the other person was at that moment asleep in Patrick’s bed, one arm draped loosely over Patrick’s waist, the other pillowing Patrick’s head.

Sitting up in the semi-darkness—only Patrick’s night-light, a soft, yellow glow emanating from near the dresser, lit the room—Patrick felt carefully on his dresser for the bottle of rum he kept there for fortifying (said fortification only being needed for nights that ended in “Y”) and took a quick gulp.

Thus fortified, he picked up his phone. “Hello?”

Heavy breathing sounded in his ear and Patrick could hear the soft rasp as the other party licked dry lips.

“Come over.”

Then Patrick was listening to nothing but dial-tone. But nothing more had needed to be said. Because only one person—never mind who was in Patrick’s bed—could command him with two words. Only one person would ever try.

Patrick ended the call and placed his phone on the night table, next to the half-finished bottle of rum, and buried his face in his hands, suddenly too tired to even cry, not that he would have. Tears were something that he’d lost the knack of over the past couple of years.

After a few minutes, he scrubbed his face with shaking hands and carefully slid out of bed. Out from under the warmth of Chandler’s arm and Chandler’s protection. But not before looking back and stealing a kiss from that full, but grim, rarely-smiling mouth.

Then he was picking up their hastily-shed clothes from the floor, sorting his own from Chandler’s—an easy enough thing to do since Chandler was by far the physically larger man, both taller than Patrick and built like a wall of muscle, where Patrick was smallish and lean—and getting dressed quickly . . . with hands that still shook.

When he was done he stood in front of the mirror, gazing with detachment at his reflection. Pale and rather young-looking in tight dark jeans, a white net shirt—because Davis Welch liked his whores to dress the part . . . at least in his presence—and a red vinyl jacket, he looked younger than his twenty-three years. Much younger, and that was something most of his clients and his employer liked about “Trick”: the body of jailbait, but the mouth of a forty-year old dockyard whore in all the ways that counted.

Running a hand through curly, light-brown hair grown out to a chin-length halo that many men, Chandler included, loved to run their hands through, and to use to grip and guide, Patrick sighed and grinned at himself in the mirror. Not his real smile, but the quirky, devil-may-care-but-I-don’t grin that showed off the results of teenage years spent in all sorts of Rube Goldberg-like headgear.

I can do this, he told himself. I will do this because if I don't, Davis will come here, and . . . beaten, raped, and threatened is better than beaten, raped, and dead, right? Right?

Patrick’s reflection was curiously mum on the subject, and had been for some months. Its eyes drifted, instead, to the man still not-quite-snoring in Patrick’s bed. He took up what seemed like most of the bed—and all of the sheets—and often Patrick woke up on the mornings after their assignations either on the edge of the bed, or splayed all over Chandler like the man was memory foam.

Patrick wished he had the luxury of doing so, now. Of getting undressed and crawling back into bed to kiss Chandler’s café-au-lait skin and run his hands through soft, inky-dark chest hair—a kink Patrick hadn’t even known he’d had, till Chandler Raymond had shuffled into his life, a grimly gorgeous, but surprisingly body-shy man, who nonetheless screamed cop with every word and gesture—and wake Chandler with his mouth and his hands. . . .

How Patrick wished. . . .

He stared and stared, seconds rolling into minutes, until Chandler sighed, and turned onto his back, muttering something too low for Patrick to make out.

Blinking away sudden, burning, surprising tears, Patrick returned his compromised gaze to the dresser. Grabbed the usual suspects: keys, wallet, chapstick, cancer-sticks, lighter. Next to a full-ish bottle of rum and in front of Patrick’s hair brush was a familiar pair of death-dealers. Chandler’s service piece, shining like new, security code-lock ON, as belabored by the occasionally blinking red light near the trigger. And next to that was what Chandler fondly referred to as his “ventilator.” A pistol so old, that it didn’t even have a lock on it—either thumbprint or code—just some sort of safety device.

Like something out of an old movie, Patrick had always thought, and been vaguely charmed by in a wary sort of way. But it’d always scared him, this gun—this ventilator. Because a gun that couldn’t be code-locked or print-locked could be used by anyone.

Anyone.

And for anything.

Now, Patrick reached out and traced the cool, somehow rough metal of the ventilator—lightly, half-afraid the damned thing’d go off and kill him or Chandler, somehow. But as nothing happened, he grew braver, and more entranced by the firm, somehow noble lines of the ancient pistol. It was like something out of a Western, almost, except that it was snub-nosed and bulky, instead of long and narrow.

Not necessarily a gunslinger’s weapon of choice. Though a gunslinger had chosen it. And that gunslinger slept on unknowingly in Patrick’s bed. Unknowing that his precious talisman, his ventilator, was being touched and considered by his. . . .

His what? His boyfriend? Ha! His whore? Hardly, I don’t even charge him anymore, I’ve gone that soft on him. His fuck-buddy? Patrick smiled bitterly down at the ventilator and closed his hand around the stock, hefting it carefully. It was heavy, and still cool in his hand.

This gun had seen blood, Patrick sensed. Maybe not on Chandler’s watch, but on some other’s—cop or not. This firearm had taken lives, justly or not. It had guarded and defended. Had possibly even saved lives.

Tears welling in his eyes again, Patrick laid the ventilator down once more, swiping at the uncharacteristic wetness.

“Can’t save me, can it?” he said aloud, but quietly. Hopelessly. His eyes strayed to the mirror again. To the reflection of the man who wasn’t a client, wasn’t his boyfriend, but wasn’t—quite—just a fuck-buddy. The man who Patrick had long since begun to wonder if he was falling for, and hard . . . if only because his own line of work had begun to seem as unsavory as Patrick was beginning to suspect it’d always been.

Closing his eyes, Patrick took several deep breaths and reminded himself of how much worse it would be if Davis Welch had to call him twice.

Best to just get this over and done. Out of the way, so he could come home, shower, and get in bed before Chandler woke. A little makeup would cover the bruises on his face, provided Davis didn’t get too enthusiastic. Though it wouldn’t do anything for any marks left on wrists, neck, and back. But what did it matter? Chandler had noticed these marks before, with his keen, detective’s eye, but he never said anything about them. Would merely search Patrick’s eyes then kiss him softly, on each bruise, each contusion, each set of scrapes and gouges.

Soft as those kisses were, they’d always hurt just a bit . . . but at the same time, they felt divine. Those kisses had made Patrick’s heart feel like it couldn’t pump out blood fast enough. As if it’d up and explode from too much . . . something.

Tears rolled, unnoticed down Patrick’s face, and his shaking hand closed on the grip of the ventilator once more.

*

“You’re late.”

Cigarette lodged firmly in mouth, Patrick slinked his way down into the basement of the club under which Davis based his operations. Once a small time crook whose cover was as a DJ, Davis now owned three clubs, and this one, Purgatorio, was his favorite.

In Patrick’s opinion, however, it lived up to its name.

Though he supposed he was biased. Purgatorio was where he’d met Davis Welch—the cute, glamorous (to a kid fresh out of the Midwest and community college) guy who’d pursued him for the better part of a year, promising him everything from fame and fortune, to love and security—fallen in love with Davis Welch, and eventually gotten turned-out by Davis Welch.

“But fashionably so,” Patrick purred around his cigarette, stalking past the tacky cobalt-blue sofas and glass coffee tables, across the office to Davis’s desk. Strapped under his arm, in a holster that wasn’t meant for it, an unfamiliar weight shifted, but mostly stayed put. Hadn’t, as of yet, blown his ass—or any of the bits that Chandler liked—off.

Davis watched him with intense, wide, pinprick-pupil eyes. He was already high on . . . whatever. That meant this night could go either of two ways: Patrick could wind up getting clumsily half-fucked and roughed up, before being tossed out. Or Patrick could wind up getting fucked and then fucked up equally badly, then tossed out to make his way home or to the ER if his injuries were bad enough.

Or maybe the morgue, this time, a soft voice whispered in Patrick’s head. That voice sounded like Chandler’s, deep and reasonable. Worried, in that quiet way Chandler had.

Ignoring that voice for the moment, Patrick leaned on edge of Davis’s huge desk, opposite the man himself, only to have the cigarette snatched out of his mouth and ground out hard, high on the sleeve of his jacket, before being dropped to the floor.

Putting on his sexiest smile in an attempt to placate in advance, Patrick didn't even wince, despite the brief, bright flash of pain in his shoulder.

“Miss me, Daddy?” he asked throatily, daring to sit lightly on the edge of the desk. Davis smirked, coming around the side of the desk. Patrick tried not to gag. At Davis’s nearness, at the feel of his body heat, or the scent of his cologne.

Davis’s blue eyes were in a sea of red, hooded and unreadable. He reached out and brushed his index finger across Patrick’s lips, and Patrick had to once more work hard not to gag. Especially since the finger didn’t leave, but lingered, running down his chin and throat, down collarbone and mesh shirt, drifting briefly to his right nipple, where it and Davis’s thumb pinched just this side of painful. Patrick let himself suck in a breath that shook artfully, and Davis’s smirk grew. He pinched and squeezed and played for nearly two minutes during which Patrick wanted nothing more than to run away. Run home, where his lover slept soundly, unknowingly, and take a long, hot shower. Or six.

But then Davis’s finger was drifting down to Patrick’s fly, where it stopped, and Davis paused, frowning thoughtfully, searching Patrick’s eyes.

“Get naked,” he finally ordered, and Patrick felt a moment of quiet panic. Usually, Davis didn’t bother with such niceties as nudity. Simply yanked down Patrick’s jeans to mid-thigh, pushed up his shirt to mid-back, and bent him over that ridiculously huge desk.

Usually. . . .

Oh, God, something’s up. Maybe he knows . . . oh, God, does he know about the ventilator?

Mind gibbering in panic once more—if Davis knew about or found out about the ventilator strapped under Patrick’s jacket and over the mesh shirt . . . Patrick was a dead man. They’d be fishing his bloated corpse out of the Puget Sound in a week—Patrick stalled by reaching for that sexy smile once more, and undoing his fly slowly in a striptease that used to, once upon a year, get Davis going faster than anything.

And indeed, Davis smirked even wider, his eyes roving Patrick’s slim frame voraciously.

“You still seein’ that cop?” he asked out of nowhere, throwing Patrick for a loop. Patrick paused for a few seconds, before continuing to skin his jeans down slowly, his brain working at light-speed.

“Nah, nah. ‘Course not, baby,” he lied, pasting on that sexy smile, which felt more like a cardboard grimace. “You told me not to—”

And that was as far as Patrick got before a vicious backhand had him staggering backwards, pants half-down. The backs of his calves hit something and he folded like a bad hand in poker, collapsing into the softness of one of the hideous sofas.

His ringing head and spinning vision made seeing a sucker’s bet, but he could still see well enough to make out Davis stalking toward him.

“You think I don’t know what goes on in my own house, you little bitch? You think I don’t know?” Davis’s voice was slowly rising, till it was a weird counterpoint to the techno-blare from the club above.

“Please, Daddy,” Patrick began, struggling to sit up, tonguing his split, bloody lip. He knew even as his head spun, that if he stood up he’d only get knocked down again. And harder. “Please—”

“I know you been seein’ him behind my back for months,” Davis said, his voice gone quiet again. “Know you were with him tonight. Betcha didn’t even take a shower before you came here, huh?” The last of the spinning and ringing cleared just in time for Patrick to be snatched up by his throat and pulled toward Davis, the ventilator rattling and jostling under his right arm (because the shoulder holster was made for a left-handed draw, such as Chandler). “You were gonna gimme his sloppy seconds, weren’t you?”

“No, Davis, I—” Patrick choked out around Davis’s mean grip and druggy-strength. But Davis wasn’t listening. He shook Patrick like a terrier would shake a rat.

“What happened to you, Trick, huh? You went from bottom bitch to expendable in, like, six months.” Davis actually sounded curious under his anger, and for a moment, even Patrick wondered what had happened to him. But only for a moment, because he already knew the answer: Chandler Raymond had happened to him. And he knew Davis knew it, too, so there really wasn’t any sense in pretending anymore was there?

“I’m sorry, Davis,” Patrick huffed out softly, and it sounded like the lie that it was.

“Not as sorry as I’m gonna make you, baby.”

Davis let him go and Patrick staggered. Then Davis hauled back and punched him in the mouth, and Patrick landed on the tacky couch once more in a gasping, shuddering heap. Swallowing blood, he curled up in fetal position, barely conscious even as one hand went up in supplication—in a plea that he was currently unable to voice.

His hand was slapped away, and stronger hands were turning Davis onto his stomach, pulling his hips up, and spreading his legs. Once he was positioned just so, one of those hands left Patrick’s hip to grasp his neck and push his face into the cushion of the couch. The other hand was gone a moment after that, and a moment after that, the jingle of Davis’s belt buckle sounded out like Christmas, merry and harmless.

Patrick’s last thoughts before everything went . . . away, in a haze of pain, were of Chandler. . . .

Chandler in Patrick’s bed, waking up on a dreary overcast morning and smiling at Patrick as if genuinely glad to see him, and despite the cloud cover outside, it was the sun coming up in Patrick’s world. Nothing but sunshine, sunshine, sunshine, and how could anything hurt when there were smiles like that still in the world?

It was a question without an answer—if, that is, one discounted the animalistic grunts in Patrick’s ear, keeping time with the sharp, repeating pain driving its way to his core—Patrick discovered shortly . . . just the blank irrefutable proof of unvarnished truth.

Even as he was smothered in the cushion and his aching body rocked forward by the violence perpetrated on it, Patrick was inching his left hand under his torso, feeling for it, for his salvation—

—for the ventilator—

Davis’s hand clamped down harder on his neck, his breath a sudden hot wind gusting through Patrick’s sweaty hair and on Patrick’s sweaty cheek, and Patrick knew it was almost over . . . and when it was over, he’d likely be beat some more. And to death, this time.

His questing fingers were momentarily pinned underneath his torso as Davis really put his back into it. Then, what felt like eternities later, Davis relented and there was room to move and Patrick pushed his hand up toward his armpit with one final lunge of his arm, his fingers brushing, then clutching at finally-warm metal.

Those fingers, sweat-slippery, but sure, closed on the grip. And behind him, Davis finished with a drawn-out groan, on the backs of which were the kind of filth that had once turned Patrick’s crank, as well as the filth that never had.

Then Davis’s weight was levering off of him. The rough purr of a zipper sounded in a silence that was only broken by soft sobs Patrick was startled to realized were coming from himself.

“Get up.”

Patrick could barely move, he ached and hurt so much, but move he did, still sobbing, and rolled onto his side.

Davis was, seen through Patrick’s tears, nothing but a malevolent blur. But Patrick could, it turned out, see him well enough. See the way his eyes widened when he saw the shaking ventilator.

“The fuck—?” Davis muttered, barely audible over the techno-blare, surprise, rather than fear coloring his voice. Then Patrick’s arm was rebounding back toward his shoulder with pain like an agonized roar . . . and Davis was suddenly looking down at the not inconsiderable hole in his chest, one hand coming up to—block? Defend? Something. But the next shot was low, also barely audible over the music from above, and hit him in the stomach, at which point Davis sank to his knees, blood spilling out of him like crimson water. . . .

His sobbing finally done, Patrick struggled to his feet, ignoring the dull pain of recoil in his shoulder and arm. Ignoring the sharp, horrible ache and ticklish trickles of blood and come running down his legs. Those legs trembled and shook, but kept him upright, and that was all that mattered.

He re-aimed the ventilator at Davis—this time at his head. Upstairs, the techno-blare picked up tempo . . . grew even louder, if that was possible. And how many times had that awful music played, covering his sobs, pleas for mercy, and screams for help? Not that any help would have come, even if the whole world had heard.

Well. Maybe Chandler would have come. But then, Chandler was different from anyone Patrick had ever known. He was . . . honorable . . . somehow cleaner than the average person Patrick tended to meet. The fact that Davis’s mean, scummy existence had tainted their time together, but had never tainted Chandler, himself, had only made him seem to shine brighter to Patrick.

Sometimes, Chandler was too bright to look at without Patrick wanting to curl up in a ball and cry. All because of what he, Patrick, was. Because of what he, Davis, had turned Patrick into.

“But not anymore,” he told Davis gently, through split, puffy lips. Davis held up his hand much like Patrick had not so long ago. “Good-bye, Davis.”

The next bullet blew away his right hand, and Davis screamed—an agonized, prolonged caterwaul.

The final three obliterated scream and skull.

Finally, Patrick’s legs gave out and he flopped back to the couch with a moan, the ventilator dropping from tired, nerveless fingers to the soft blue cushion. He felt numb and exhausted. So he curled up on his side, keeping a wary eye on Davis’s body, one bitter-tasting thumb coming up to his mouth. His other hand curled up around the ventilator just in case. It would keep watch with him.

Having it so near was like having Chandler with him, and despite the startling warmth of it and the strange perfume with which it had colored the air, it was . . . comforting.

Once again, his last thoughts before everything went hazy again, were of Chandler: smiling that glad-to-see-you-Trick smile. . . .

And Patrick Blair smiled to himself despite the pain of his mouth and the salt-copper taste flooding it. Smiled, around his bitter, burnt thumb, and even laughed a little as the smile on Chandler-in-his-mind widened.

Because a world with such a smile in it couldn’t be an all-bad place, could it?

Could it?

*

Det. Chandler Raymond had a gun and he was very much obliged to carry it. Every day, in fact.

The gun itself was something of an antique. It didn’t lock with a word, and unlock with a retinal-scan or voice-print, or even a thumbprint. It could’ve and probably had been used by anyone with an index finger and/or a serious grudge.

That’s what he liked about it: the feeling that—irrational though it was—this gun could kill for him, when needed, possibly without his say-so. That it could take lives for him, if called to do so, and somehow spare the trod-upon carpet of his conscience.

Unfortunately it was unlikely to ever do so since, because of its antique and nigh untraceable nature, it was illegal to use as a service piece. So instead, this piece, this gun, this ventilator, remained in a concealed holster at the small of his back as a just-in-case. Passed down by Raymond’s father—himself a company man—to be carried by yet another Det. Raymond for the past twenty years.

And though Raymond doubted that, at this late date, he’d ever have a child on whom to pass the ventilator, he nevertheless carried it and cared for it with dedication and purpose. More than he showed his service pieces, even. And though everyone at the station house knew about the ventilator, and occasionally teased him about it—their own concealed pieces were much newer and snazzier—Raymond fancied himself a man with Excalibur in his back pocket.

Well. Perhaps a little higher than that.

“Keep strapping that caveman-thing there, baby, and one of these days you’re gonna fart, and blow your ass right off,” Trick had blown out yesterday morning, on the back of mentholated smoke, as he watched Raymond get dressed. This same exchange usually happened at least seven out of the ten mornings they woke up next to each other.

As always, Raymond had snorted and buttoned his shirt, rolling his right shoulder and wincing. After a year, the doctors’ bullshit predictions about soreness and pain lessening ‘substantially’ had proven to be just that: bullshit.

But at least, Raymond had thought on more than one occasion, somewhere between gratefulness and irony, I jerk off left-handed.

“Probably,” he’d answered Trick. “But they’ll just pay to have it reattached. Just like they did with Ol’ Righty.” And having said that, Raymond had lifted his right arm—as high as he could lift it, anyway—and rotated it slowly, just to make plastic alloy tendons grate and pop against shaven-down bone.

Just to make Trick flinch, and roll over to face the window, huffing offended smoke at passing pigeons and at the rainy Seattle day just getting started.

When Raymond had finished dressing and arming himself, he stumped around the bed for a kiss good-bye, and got a half-lidded gaze and a face full of smoke for his troubles.

“Try not to get any of the bits I like blown off, will you? Including and not limited to your ass?”

Coughing melodramatically, Raymond had stolen a kiss anyway, because he knew Trick would let him. And because, smoke be damned, Trick-kisses were always worth a little nicotine.

This morning, however, as he’s preparing to leave Trick’s place—despite the clutching of those arms and the worried look in those green-and-red, cried-out Christmas-eyes—the conversation is quite different. But it begins, as usual, when Raymond is dressing. He unconsciously starts searching around Trick’s bedroom for the ventilator before remembering . . . before firming his mouth into a grim line and buttoning his shirt as if nothing has happened.

And he thinks he’s gotten away with it, too . . . with pretending he doesn’t miss the damn thing—which has seen blood, but none of it spilled by Raymond—until Trick’s arms wrap around his waist, startling him.

“Stay with me, today . . . please? Please? I . . . I don’t wanna be alone." Despite a long shower, Trick smells like gun powder residue—everything does, after last night. It doesn’t help matters that Trick hasn’t touched a cigarette since Welch had snatched that one out of his mouth, last night. One of the last things Davis Welch had ever done.

“Please, baby? We can fuck, if you want, or do whatever, just . . . stay, Chandler. Please?”

Raymond meets those cried-out eyes in Trick’s vanity mirror and tries to smile before turning to face the normally smart-mouthed rent-boy who’d somehow, against all odds, made it under his skin.

Past his damned badge, even.

“Neither of us can afford a break in our routines—especially not for the next few weeks. When they find Welch’s body—and they will,” Raymond says firmly, his hands clenching on Trick’s lean biceps. Trick shudders, but nods dully. “When they find the body, you’re gonna be suspect number two. If only because, after they start asking around, they’ll find out about you and me . . . and I’ll likely be suspect number one. But suspicions are just that: suspicions. They need proof before they can do anything to either of us. Or they need one of us to slip up, or stray from the story, capiche?”

“Capiche.” Trick closes his eyes, but not before more tears sneak out like prisoners over the wall. “I’m so sorry,” he says quietly, biting his lower lip. “I don’t know why I—it’s not like it was the first time he’d called me to come by in the middle of the night just so he could work me over. I could take it in my sleep, I swear I could. I knew what was coming and I was okay with it. Really, I was. . . .”

Then why’d you take my ventilator with you, when you went to meet him? Raymond wants to ask . . . but doesn’t. It won’t solve anything. Won’t make Trick less of a killer and himself less of a . . . dirty cop.

And anyway, he’s long suspected that at least some of the reasons Trick got “worked over” was Raymond, himself. In the world of Welch and scum just like him, even cops don’t get a taste without some kind of payment, be it in cash or protection.

Except for Raymond, it would appear, who hasn’t left any cash on Trick’s dresser in months, or offered Welch any sort of protection or even relevant intel about where and when busts are going down ever.

“Oh, God,” Trick moans suddenly, his whole body shaking as if it’ll fly apart. Sighing, Raymond pulls Trick into his arms and leans their foreheads together.

“It’ll be alright, babe,” he says, with no proof that it will be, just a hopeless sort of hope that, somehow, it can be.

Trick’s arms wrap panic-tight around his neck, his face hot and wet as it presses against Raymond’s throat. But not hotter and wetter than the desperate kisses Trick intersperses with equally desperate pleas for Raymond to stay, please, stay?

“I can stay till you fall asleep, kiddo, but then I gotta be at the station—“

“How can I ever sleep again?” Trick asks, shaking his head and sniffling. “After what I’ve done, how can I even go on. . . ?”

“Because you have to. And you will,” Raymond says, smiling a little—more of a grimace than an expression of happiness, but when Trick looks up at him, he returns that grimace hopefully. Bounces up on his toes and kisses Raymond hard.

“I know you have to go, but . . . don’t leave me, yet, Chandler,” he hitches softly, his leaf-green eyes shining with as yet unshed tears. “Don’t leave me alone.”

“I won’t, Patrick. I won’t.”

Raymond maneuvers them back towards Trick’s bed, but not before grabbing a bottle of rum—some ridiculously high-proofed shit, one of several emptied bottles of the same—off the dresser.

Trick, after a judicious amount of bad rum and cuddling, falls into a fitful sort of sleep that eventually deepens into a heavier doze. When he’s far gone enough for Raymond to disengage from him without waking him, Raymond does, albeit reluctantly: rounds up his rumpled clothes from the floor, and gets dressed once more. He avoids his own gaze in the mirror as he does so.

And as he walks toward his station house without the tell-tale weight of the ancient ventilator at his back, he feels oddly unmanned. Incomplete. Light. He meets every eye along the way easily, grimly, as usual, and when he reaches the station house, there’s only a slight hesitation before he climbs the grimy stone steps to the busy front entrance. He grips the clammy, rusting guardrail as if his life depended on it because, unconscionably, he feels as if he might just float away, otherwise.

For Det. Chandler Raymond has a gun, yes, but not the gun. The unlicensed, illegal ventilator—passed down to him by several generations of Raymonds—that’d once represented his hope, his purity, and yes, his honor, now rests at the bottom of the Puget Sound, along with many others of its ilk.

And Raymond . . . well, the blood on his hands is only by association, but his palms are no less red for that—his soul no less stained.

END