This Gun's For Hire
by Taz (aka Quisp)

Chapter 1

Love.

It will get you in trouble, every time. Not the 'being in love' part. That part is great, especially if it's been a while. However, if you let yourself get lost in the—the what's'it—the fugue state—the hallelujah-last-night-was-the-first-time-night-of-the-rest-your-lifetime rush. That sensory overload where you're walking around and talking and thinking that you're making sense, but you're not, because it feels like he's still moving inside you.

That, my friend, will get you into trouble. So much trouble.

How?

Suppose, you're attending the biggest National Law Enforcement Convention there is. In Los Angeles. Tough luck. Or maybe not, someone had to go and you drew the short straw and that precipitated the fight in the car two nights ago; which led to what happened in your partner's bed; then what happened on the sofa and on the floor and...you got it. You just hooked the bright brass ring but your ear is stinging where he took a sneaky little nip when he hugged you goodbye at the airport. And, if the situation wasn't sucky enough, there's fuck-all to do between sessions at this thing except eat and drink, and avoid guys you used to know back in Jersey who want to hit the strip and get laid—this is American Law Enforcement at its finest! You got your Fed, your State, your Local, and even your high-end private professionals—male and female—and, being a convention, there's all kinds of come-and-get-it in the air. Your prick can't help nudging. It's primed and cocked. It knows what it wants, and it wants it now. Thing is, that brass ring I mentioned is twenty-five hundred miles away.

Sucks to be you.

You're not going to pick-up a nice lady, professional or otherwise, because, don't ask me to explain, that would be cheating on your ex-wife. And you are definitely not going to play 'mine's bigger'n yours'' with some fellow, because that would be cheating on your lover.

You cruise the exhibition hall. There's some interesting ordinance on display. Imagine buying a pink Hello Kitty Sig Sauer P226 with Swarovski crystals on it for your little girl. Imagine what your ex-wife will say if you do.

So, you're walking around horny and lonesome. You're thinking you'll head up to your room and beat-off and...that's when you catch a familiar profile out of the corner of your eye. It's him! He bending over some dealer's table. He's checking out a way cool Walther PPK. (That's the classic Bond piece.) No way, does it strike you as even remotely preposterous, because in the state you're in, you know he'd fly to LA to surprise you. Now, who's going to surprise who?

You make sure no one's looking, sidle up behind him, grab a handful, and that's where it goes wrong.

It should have been a smooth move. Except his back goes rigid and, at exactly the same moment, you apprehend that in a room where everyone is packing heat—hell, where even the guns have guns—you've just groped a random stranger.

There's no time to grasp the full horrible, colossal magnitude of a blunder that big, because the guy turns around, takes hold of a handful of your shirt, gives it a twist, and jerks you up on your toes. You're belly to belly, smelling that classic Old Spice, and he says, kind of like Dirty Harry would have, "Most people offer to buy me a drink first."

"I'll bet they do!" I don't know. Like the eyes of 89.4 percent of the twelve-steppers staggering around here weren't blood shot. Maybe it was something with the lights in the ballroom, or else the way he was twisting my tie and choking off my oxygen. Under those circumstances, I know the next thing out your mouth shouldn't have been, "My, what sharp teeth you have, grandma." …and, why are your eyes that funny pale color?

I don't think I added that last bit, but I was about to when he blinked—who wouldn't—and, suddenly, his eyes were plain old hazel and his teeth were just teeth. "Give me one reason," he said, "why I shouldn't beat the crap out you."

One thing do I know is when it's time to roll over. and show your belly. I put my hands up.

"My mistake. I am so, so sorry. Believe me, I would never ever, ever…do…done. Don't hit me. At least, not here. If you hit me, it's assaulting a police officer. Unless you're a police officer, too, in which case I don't know. Honestly, I mistook you for a friend of mine."

"Must be a close friend," he said.

"A very close friend. A close friend who I am totally, completely and insanely in love with and, I swear, you could be his thinner, handsomer, younger brother." I have no idea why I said that, except that when you've been caught coping a feel, and your face is stop-sign red, there's nothing to do but mug it up. It worked. The guy laughed out loud.

"I guess I won't beat the crap out of you then," he said, and let me down.

The dealer was goggle eyed. I mean, no 'practically' about it, I had just assaulted the guy. We backed away from each other. I'm sure everyone else in the place was wondering what was going on. They'd know shortly. Any other time I would have wiped the smirk off that dealer's face. There are no worse gossips than cops. Talk about terminal humiliation. Luckily it was time for the next session of talks.

All I remember from that afternoon is the titles of two of the talks. One of them, 'Advances in Criminal Profiling,' I got some good notes on. But the second: 'Serial Killers in the 20th Century: A Statistical Analysis' - was some stuttering twelve-year-old from the FBI's Behavior Analysis Unit. It was heavy on charts and tables, and I was yawning within ten minutes. And I'd sucked up a quart of coffee during the break. Jet Lag.

People, especially my mother, forget there's a time difference. But the worst thing was, the guy I'd groped was sitting about twelve rows in front of me on the aisle and whenever he'd turn toward the guy next to him, it was like now you see it, now you don't. Right profile, wrong everything else. And, speaking of weird, at one point he turned around and stared straight at me, like he knew I was ogling him in the dark. When the two-thousandth screen of nothing but numbers popped on the screen, I escaped outside and found the smoker's ghetto. I desperatly needed to make a phone call.

"McGarrett."

"It's me."

"Hey! How's it going'?" The sound of his voice made my tummy flutter.

"I'm lonesome," I moaned. "I miss you. I want you. I want you so ba-a-ad—it's drivin' me mad." I guess he was in the outer office, because I heard him choke."

"Pick you up at the airport?" he said.

"Oh, yes. You will pick me up at the airport, and you will take me directly home, and you will fuck me rigid. You don't happen to have a younger brother you've never happened to mention, do you?"

"What? Not unless… No! Why?"

"Nothing. I'll tell you about it when I get home. Love you."

"Love you," he whispered back, and hung up.

It made me feel worse than ever. I decided I needed to get drunk, but the hotel lounge was noisy and full of cops. I knew some of them. Given the mood I was in, if any one of them asked me what had happened earlier, I would have ripped his head off.

Fortunately, the hotel was just off of Wilshire Boulevard and a couple of blocks away, on the corner of Dexel, I found a great old bar, The Wise Old Bird. It was tucked into the lobby of one of the old office buildings and what I mean by a great bar is one where there are lots of high-back booths, and no television. Somewhere you can sit quietly, and hear yourself think. I staked out a booth in back where it was darkest, ordered a Johnny Walker Blue, and settled down to sulk in style. If there had been a juke box, I would have been fed it quarters, and played Springsteen.

Problem was the waitress came back with a carafe of water, and a partial bottle of some kind whiskey that I didn't recognize. I don't know everything about whiskey, but I do know that when the name begins with 'Mac' it's too expensive for Danny. The JWB was already above my price point. There were two glasses on the tray, and I was starting to explain that she'd gotten the wrong order when Guess Who slipped into the other side of the booth. The waitress put the tray down and escaped

Damn, if he didn't even have that little scrintch between his eyes.

While I was giving him my best eastside glare, he shrugged and poured an inch of whiskey into one of the glasses. "Try this," he said. "You'll feel better."

Funny guy, huh? Didn't make me laugh.

I said, "What do you want?"

"I was hoping that you'd let me apologize."

"For what? Stealing my lines?"

"You made a mistake. I overreacted."

I was about to tell him to get lost. And then he smiled, and I recognized the smile. That smile is more contagious than the measles. I grabbed the glass in front of me and tossed it back. Whatever was in it scorched the lining off my tongue. It burned like fire all the way down.

He enjoyed me sputtering around for a bit, then said, "You okay? You don't gulp single malt."

"What the ever-loving-hell, was that?"

"Macallan. The 25. You sip it. Here..." He filled my glass again, and topped it with water. "A drop of water brings out the violet and rose petal notes in the liquor."

"Don't push your luck, Mister—"

"St. John."

"I wasn't asking. Why did you follow me? You want to have that fight now?"

"I didn't follow you…"

"Listen, Mister—"

"St. John." He smiled again. "Mick St. John."

"Danny Williams."

"New York?"

"New Jersey." My mother taught me manners and it just came out. "I asked you what you why you followed me."

"I was wondering if you had a picture."

"A picture?"

"Of my fatter, uglier," his mouth twitched, "older brother. If you do, I'd like to see it."

So what if he didn't believe me? I dug out my phone, pulled up a shot I'd taken the last time we were at the firing range and handed it over. I did it to shut him up, but it didn't work. The squinch between his eyes got sharper, he tilted his head—funny how his nostrils kind of quivered. "Who's is he?"

"McGarrett. Lt. Commander Steve McGarrett, Hawaii Five-0. My partner."

He mouthed the name, tasting it, and says, "Hawaii's a ways away from New Jersey."

"As it happens, my ex-wife and daughter live in that pineapple infested hell-hole. Perforce, so do I."

"Hell hath its compensations," he said. "What's Five-0?"

"The Governor of Hawaii's very own personal, very special, exclusive task-force."

"I'm impressed." he said.

"Don't be," I said, and, right then, I should have realized that I still wasn't firing on all cylinders. Blame it on jet-lag, the single malt, or me thinking McGarrett would never let his hair get long enought to brush his collar that way. I was distracted until St. John held up a shot of Kono walking out of the ocean with her board. He raises his eyebrow and goes, "Hot-cha!" The bastard had been clicking through my files!

"Gimme that!" I grabbed the phone back and stuck it in my shirt pocket. "Those are personal!"

"So I noticed," he said.

I engaged my patented Destruct-O-ray. He paid me never mind, just stared into the distance as if he were sorting out something in his head. "I've been to Hawaii," he said. "Not recently, though…" I decided this dork bore absolutely no resemblance McGarrett, after all. "My parents…I think, maybe, that's where they met."

"You don't know where your parents met? I know the name of the band that played at the sock-hop where my parents met in the tenth grade." Hell, yeah, I was being snotty.

"No, I don't know." He scowled and the resemblance hauled off and punched me in the gut again. "My parents weren't big on reminiscing. My father was in the Navy during the war and when he got back they fell on some hard times."

Fair enough. But, since he'd brought it up, I said, "What a coincidence; my friend's whole family is Navy from way back. His Grandfather died on the Arizona, but I know his father got around…" Considering Steve worships the ground Jack McGarrett walked on, I shouldn't have been implying what I was implying, but…obvious conclusions are obvious.

St. John started laughing. "If you're thinking what I think you're thinking, let me assure you." He draws a circle around his face and points to the pocket where I stuffed my phone. "No way this face and your partner's are anything but a fluke. Everyone's got a double somewhere. It looks like him and me—we're both stuck with some hellacious stubborn Scotch-Irish genes."

I snorted. "It could be worse."

"It could a whole lot worse," Mr. Modest said and, for some resaon, we both started laughing. By the time I was wiping my eyes, I was done being mad at him, or at least I was done being mad at the world.

St. John's eyes had that faraway look again. I wondered what he was thinking about, but I'm glad I didn't ask. He might have told me. We split the last of the bottle between us and, as we touched glasses, the waitress popped out of nowhere.

"Will you be ordering dinner tonight, Mr. St. John," she said. "Or would like me to bring another bottle?"

St. John looked at me. I shook my head no.

"I guess not, Margie. Thanks."

She went away and he stood up. "Come on upstairs with me, if you've got minute. I do have the Glenmorangie. You'll like it."

"Upstairs?"

"My office. I'm a private investigator."

Well, that accounted for a few things. What it doesn't account for is why I went with him, except the guy, clearly, had nothing but the finest taste in booze. That, and for the first time since I'd gotten on that eastbound, I didn't feel half of me had been ripped away. I was ready to get mellow. What I should have remembered was the advice my cousin Joey gave me instead of a present on my fourteenth birthday. He said it would help me get laid, and that was a thing I urgently wanted know about. He told me that no girl's hotter to trot than a girl who just did. I had to wait two more years, but he was right. I found out for myself a few more years after that, that it's almost as true for guys.