Page 85 of The Cartographer

Hadn’t been half-bad at it, really, though it’d almost killed my mother. Coming home looking like I did—bruised and bloody and so keyed up she must’ve thought I was on some crazy good street drugs—would’ve scared any parent shitless, never mind mine, who didn’t have the same tools at her disposal to make me knock that shit off. Pain is an excellent deterrent, and I was completely undeterred. How do you bargain with a kid like that?

That was how I’d met Brandy. He’s the one who’d made all the difference. In all probability, I would’ve gotten myself killed eventually.

Allie’s teasing voice reminds me of what we’d been talking about. “Seems to me most of your clients already think you are Batman. Also, you do kind of look like a Bruce.”

I shoot him a withering glare to cover up the bloom of pleasure that Hart thinks I’m good at my job, and he grins back. “At any rate, yes, that’s how I ended up doing this. Prep school by day, kink by night. I was lucky I looked older than I was and that I had a friend who would vouch for me.”

Friend is perhaps a strange word for my relationship with Brandy, but the closest to what Allie would understand.

One night when I’d been playing paladin, I’d happened upon some assholes who were roughing up a skinny kid in an alley. Naturally, I went all early Steve Rogers on the guys and earned myself a few broken ribs and a quality shiner before it got broken up by a couple of cops. Despite my injuries, I managed to give them the slip and ignored their threats to shoot, because what the fuck did I care? Fucking shoot me.

The next night I was at it again, and one of the cops managed to run me down, tackle me. After he’d cuffed me and dragged me up to standing, he…stared. Dark eyes and hair I could tell was red even in the glow of the streetlights, he looked me up and down and not in the way I’d gotten used to men looking at me in this neighborhood.

“Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”

Of course my bluster didn’t make him blink, and the fucker still wouldn’t stop staring at me. “You grow up in Philly, kid?”

“Manhattan.”

“Your dad a cop?”

“None of your business.”

“If you want to get out of here without a record, it fucking is. Answer my question.”

So I had. “Was.”

He’d looked at me for a long time, and I probably should’ve been scared, but I wasn’t. Just pissed. I wanted to spit in his face, but I knew what could happen to a brown kid dressed like I was. Nothing good. So I waited. And waited. Until he finally opened his mouth.

“You look like a guy I used to be on the force with. Back when I worked for NYPD. You any relation to Javi Reyes?”

He must’ve known by the way I looked at him or something, because all of a sudden, he looked sad. And old. Way too old to have known my dad. My dad had a goddamn Tom Selleck mustache; he couldn’t get old like this joker. In reality, he never had.

Guy undid the cuffs, and in the split second before I beat it, he said, “Name’s Brian Brandon.”

I did not give a fuck what his name was, so I ran. Even though I wanted to ignore it, I heard him anyway. “Your dad used to call me Brandy.”

Over the course of a few months, I’d run into Brandy while I was out on my caped crusader missions. He’d cuff me—when he could catch me—and we’d talk, sitting on trashcans or leaning up against a Dumpster in dark alleys. Probably looked far more sinister or sexual than what was actually going on.

He never brought me in, but he did lecture me. Tried to get me to knock it off, but even then I knew better. So he’d asked me why, and when I didn’t answer, Brandy started guessing. He never could keep his mouth shut. Fucking Brandy.

One night when he found me, I’d had the shit kicked out of me pretty bad. Split lip, bloody nose I was lucky wasn’t broken, and an eye that would turn black and swollen overnight. Brandy didn’t even bother cuffing me that time, just hauled me over to his squad car, shoved me into the front seat, and broke out the first-aid kit he carried to clean me up.

I didn’t flinch when he ran the alcohol swab across the gash over my eyebrow.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, kid? Do youlikebeing hurt?”

All I did, all it took, was looking in his face and not saying a damn word. He stared at me, shook his head, and ran a hand down his face, looking like he was going to live to regret whatever came out of his mouth next.

“Fine. You want to get hurt? Fine. But you’re not going to get killed doing it. Javi would roll over in his grave, and neither of us want that. So here’s what you’re going to do. You wear jeans and a black T-shirt. You got black boots?”

I nodded.

“Then wear those too. You meet me at the corner of 13thand Sansom, ten o’clock Saturday night. It’s either that, or the next time I catch you, I’m bringing you in. Got it?”

There really hadn’t been a choice, and the rest, as they say, is history. History I’m not quite ready to share with Allie, but maybe someday I will because I think Brandy would like to meet him. Scratch that, IknowBrandy would love to meet him and give me a hard time.

Brandy lives in Haverford now. He’s got a nice spread he wouldn’t be able to afford on his PPD pension, but it’s a perk of saving a rich kid from himself, I suppose. I visit him sometimes when I’m back on that coast, although not as often as I used to and not nearly as often as I should, considering I owe him so much.

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