Finn turned his head to the side in the bushes by the church building, taking with him Sarge's cock, which he had been sucking, as the headlights of a new Jaguar F-Type sports coupe hit them and stopped for the briefest moment before the car drove into the church parking lot. Sarge grunted at the pull on the cock, but he kept it in Finn's mouth. He was close to coming. Finn knew his luxury cars. He'd heisted more than one in Jersey City before he had had an unfortunate and murderous stint working in a hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant. And that was before escaping across the Hudson and into the anonymous world of the New York City homeless.
He hadn't been homeless that long. He'd taken this route just a week earlier because he'd seen something by mobsters in New Jersey he shouldn't have seen, he couldn't be sure they hadn't seen him, and he didn't want to test that possibility. At nineteen, blond, blue-eyed, and with a good body, he'd been making it OK in New Jersey after dropping out of Dartmouth, or, rather, having been expelled from Dartmouth. He'd just left for New Jersey, not telling his Boston Brahmin family of his disgrace. He had wanted to cut those ties anyway.
Now he was getting a taste of the other side—and of Sarge's cock. Sarge—who knew what his real name was?—was a victim of the first Iraq War, shell-shocked, dumped in New York City, and more-or-less forgotten. He was a big man, which made all of the difference. As soon as Finn had hit NYC's homeless nation, he'd been advised to get a protector because he was just too pretty to roam the streets of the city unmolested alone. He had turned some tricks in Jersey and Sarge was trading protection for good head, so they'd hooked up.
It was November and it had already snowed once. The Manhattan churches were running winter homeless shelters and soup kitchens for the homeless already since the government had defaulted on this social responsibility. In addition to protecting him for good head, Sarge knew of all the good shelters and the best of what they were serving for meals. He'd brought Finn to an Episcopalian church—in appearance more a cathedral than just a church—in the wealthy Central Park South area of the city.
"The food's the best here," Sarge had said. "They have a room with pool tables, they show the latest movies, and the beds aren't in one large hall, but in several smaller rooms. They have lockers we can put stuff in to keep the others from stealing it too," he had added.
"Sold," Finn had said and they had trudged over there, with Finn giving a Sarge a deposit on his protection dues before they went in.
It was all as Sarge had described. Even the people waiting on them looked like the kind of snotty people the Bradlees—Finn's family name—in Boston socialized with. One guy, maybe in his late forties, but expensively dressed, tall and trim, with gray sideburns, who was giving Finn the eye while he sat next to Sarge and they ate, looked particularly well-heeled. Others doing the serving, obviously people who went to that upscale church, were giving the guy deference, which confirmed he was money or high status in Manhattan—or, most likely, both.
That said, Finn hadn't done all that much streetwalking in Jersey City before coming across the Hudson, but he'd done enough of it to know what that man's looks in his direction meant.
This came into play later that evening when they'd moved into the pool room, someone had ruffled Sarge's feathers, and he'd had a meltdown. The shelter people had a plan for such things, and Sarge wasn't the only homeless veteran with mental issues brought on by military service in the Middle East. They had him subdued and taken away somewhere, outside the church, pretty quick, but that left Finn unprotected and feeling vulnerable.
Unless . . .
"I don't think your friend will be coming back here tonight."
Finn had been standing out in the intake hall, looking at the door to the parking lot where he'd last seen Sarge being hauled out. The voice was that of the man who had served them dinner—the man who everyone else was tiptoeing around—the man who had given Finn several "could eat you alive" looks during the meal.
"He's not my friend. Just another guy," Finn had said. He didn't want to be hauled off to wherever Sarge was being taken.
"Could have fooled me," the man said. "I'm Jordan Aylor. You don't look like you've been on the homeless circuit long. I haven't seen you in here before, I don't think."
"Sarge told me this was the best place in the city to sack out," Finn said.
"Sarge. That was your friend's name? And yours is?"
"Finn," he answered. He didn't give a last name. His accent was Bostonian. If he'd said his first name was Finton and his last name was Bradlee to an obviously well-connected dude like this, the guy's wheels would start spinning. Bradlees didn't usually wind up homeless in New York. "How do you know I haven't been homeless long?"
"Several things. You're too young and don't seem pulled down yet, if you know what I mean. I heard you talk. You've had some college, haven't you?"
"Yeah, what of that would mean I haven't been homeless long?"
"The kicker is that your clothes are still good—and I bet if I looked at the labels, I'd find some of the stores I shop at too."
"Maybe I picked well at Goodwill," Finn said.
"Knowing a good label from a Walmart one and finding expensive clothes that fit you like they were custom made for you," Aylor said, and laughed. "Listen, the accommodations here are good in homeless terms, but I don't think they're good enough for you. If you want, you could come home with me tonight."
"Go home with you? And do what?"
"I think you know what," Aylor said, reaching out, after looking around, and touching Finn's shirt sleeve. "I saw these clothes earlier—and Sarge's too. You were giving him a blow job in the bushes outside. He's your protector, but he's gone at least for tonight, isn't he? Don't you think you'd like a decent shower, some good whiskey, and clean sheets in a bigger bed than a folding cot?"
Oh.
