Page 3 of Gold Rush (Murphy’s Pub #3)

Chapter Two

It wasn’t quick, like the cops came, the ambulance came, and he was carted off to the hospital. The cops came, questioned them, tried to roughly wake the man before the EMTs were allowed to come onto the scene.

Abs was pale and drawn. Ever since they had dealt with the BBC, police officers scared him. He saw all of them as if they were human traffickers and killers. Of course, that wasn’t true, but Goldie understood why he felt that way.

When the EMTs finally got the guy on a gurney and gave him fluids and Narcan, he began to come around.

Goldie was being questioned by the cops yet again but could see easily over the shorter of the two cops, and he watched tears streaming down the man’s face as he tried to tell the EMTs what had happened.

Goldie followed the cops over to listen, and what he heard broke his already fractured heart. “I didn’t! I don’t like drugs, any drugs, I swear! It was someone else, they did this to me!”

No one wanted to listen. No one believed him, but there was something in his voice that told Goldie he wasn’t lying.

Abs grabbed his hand and pulled him away. “Come on. Let’s get out of here now.”

He couldn’t deny his best friend, because of the fear he felt. “Okay. I’m gonna get you a ride home, and I’m going to follow the ambulance.”

“ What? Have you lost your mind?”

He nodded a little and said, “Maybe. I just have to know…to make sure he’s going to be okay. I mean…whoever did this to him, maybe he needs help.”

“You cannot tell me you believe him. Goldie, babe, come on, please, be serious!”

He walked with Abs and tried to explain himself, even though he really didn’t have much of an explanation. “He’s…I think he’s telling the truth. Maybe he’s not, but Abs, we all could have ended up where he was, if Murphy hadn’t given us a home and a job.”

Abs grew quiet after that, then whispered, “Yeah. You’re right.”

“Just…let me check on him, see what he has to say, maybe?”

“Sure. Sure, Goldie, you know I support you, but…let me go, too. I don’t want to leave you alone right now.”

Goldie grabbed him and roughly kissed the top of his blond head. “I love you, babe. You know that, right?”

“I do, and I love you too, even when you pull and push me around like I’m a doll or something!”

“You are a doll.”

They had the driver head to the nearest hospital and got there just after the ambulance.

They waited for a while before asking about the guy, but they had no name, so it was uneasy.

Finally, Abs batted his puppy-dog eyes at the older woman and said, “Listen, we’re invested in this man.

We found him, and…we want to make sure he’s okay. ”

She laid her hand over his and winked at him. “You boys are very sweet. Listen, let me find out who all has just come in, and what the status is. I’ll be right back.”

She told another nurse she was leaving the reception area and headed into the emergency room.

When she returned, she came right out into the lobby to find them. Both jumped up from their chairs and hurried to her.

“He’s fine. His name is Dean Miles. He insists he didn’t use, and from the looks of it, he’s not our normal addict.”

“His skin was too clear,” Goldie said.

“Lots of ways to tell, and the doctor thinks he might be telling the truth. You know,” she said, then pulled them away from anyone who could overhear.

“We’ve seen this before. He’s admittedly a prostitute.

He had no pimp, but someone wanted to change that, and when he considered it, he was dosed.

Being he had never used well, it knocked him for a loop.

Now, this is what he said, and like I said, the doctor tends to believe him.

The pimps around here like to get their people addicted. ”

“Easier to control,” Abs said with his voice cracking.

“Yes. It’s…very sad. He’s being released soon. The police wanted to arrest him, but the doctors talked them out of it.”

Goldie’s blood pressure rose over that. “Assholes.”

“Well, my husband is one, but his friends are…assholes. Yeah. So is he on a bad day,” she said with a laugh. “So, if you want to talk to him, he’s leaving now. He’ll be coming this way in a few minutes.”

“Already?”

“Narcan and fluids. That’s really all he needed.”

She left them, and Abs pulled him. “Let’s go.”

“Not yet. He’s coming out.”

“So?”

Goldie didn’t want to seem desperate, but he felt that way. He desperately wanted to see the guy. Abs huffed and asked, “Are you…like…infatuated with this hooker?”

“Abs!”

“Well, he is!”

“Abs, you work with us, and you judge?”

Abs rolled his eyes and groaned loudly. “You’re such a shithead.”

“Yeah, maybe, but I just need to see him upright and maybe see if he needs some help.”

“Like we got,” Abs finished for him.

“Yeah. Like we got.”

“Okay. Okay, I get it, I think. Go see.”

Goldie again kissed the top of his head, and then, he spotted Dean Miles coming out of the ER double doors, still pale, but gaining a little pink in his cheeks.

He stopped cold, couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, and Abs watched him like he was suddenly a stranger. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

After pushing past him, Abs walked right up to Dean and said, “Hi. We found you.”

Goldie wanted to die, but Dean’s brows raised high as he said, “Excuse me?”

“My friend over there, we found you in that alley.”

Dean looked past Abs to see where he’d nodded, and his eyes moved slowly up Goldie’s frame until they came to his eyes. “Oh! I guess thanks. I mean, no, I mean it, thanks.”

Goldie cleared his throat and asked him, “Do you need some help?”

“Help? Oh…with…no, man, I wouldn’t get anyone involved in that stuff. Thanks, but go back to your lives. I’ll be okay. I’ll just avoid certain places for a while.”

“And if you can’t?” Abs demanded. “Listen, we stuck our necks out for you, and we didn’t do it so you could go and get stabbed with another needle.”

Goldie almost lost it, ready to scream at his friend for the attack, but it worked. Dean shrugged and asked, “What can a couple of guys like you do to help someone like me? You don’t have any idea where I come from, what I’ve had to do.”

Abs gave a short, sarcastic snort. “You’d be surprised, buddy. Come on, before my friend shits himself in the damn hospital.”

Goldie’s jaw dropped, but he followed the two out of the lobby and finally into the air of the evening.

As they walked up to the road, Dean was between them. He smiled at Goldie, but asked Abs, “How can you help me?”

“We can get you off the streets.”

“Oh, great, yeah, I’ll go live in a homeless shelter, get the once over by the church members or social workers, be given a cheap phone and sent on jobs that pay about enough to get a damn burger a day. No thanks. Been there.”

Abs stopped, and they stopped with him. He waved his hands over his clothes and said, “Do I look like I work in a burger place or mopping up after people? No, but I did. I worked shitty jobs, and I struggled like you’d never believe. Someone helped me, now…now he’s helping you.”

Dean turned to Goldie and whispered, “You?”

“Y-yeah, I…I’d like to help.”

“Why is he doing all the talking?”

There was a twinkle in his eyes, and yeah, they were a brilliant deep sky-blue that drew Goldie in like that picture so long ago. “He never shuts up.”

Abs giggled and said, “I’d be mad, but it’s true. Come on, I really want out of here.”

They made it back to the pub, and Goldie sat Dean at a table while Mims stared at the guy. “Do you want something to drink?”

“Water would be great, thanks.”

Goldie and Abs pulled Mims aside after Goldie served Dean a glass of water so Goldie could ask Murphy’s whereabouts.

“He’s on a buying trip at the liquor warehouse. Why?”

Mims couldn’t stop staring at Dean, and Goldie stepped in the way so he couldn’t. “Stop gawking!”

“He’s fine! Who is he?”

“Don’t ask,” Abs said as he leaned on the bar.

“Abs, stop,” Goldie begged. “Mims, listen, this guy needs my help. I need to see if…I don’t know, he could stay around here for just long enough for me to find him a safe place.”

“Like it’s safe here,” Mims groaned.

“Did something happen?”

“No. I just miss Sonny. No matter what, he’s not coming out of hiding yet, so I have to see him when I can, and I miss him. That’s all.”

Goldie hugged his friend and said, “I get it, babe. I do.”

“Listen,” Abs said, “if Murphy doesn’t let this guy stay, we can get him a motel room.”

“Would that work for you?”

“No, but it’s a choice,” Abs defended.

Goldie saw that Abs wasn’t fond of Dean, and he’d question him on it later, but for the time being, he said, “He’s gonna stay here if I have to beg Murphy. No one gets better on the streets. Motels are for people who can barely afford to live, and if he sees that, it’ll worry him.”

Dean was suddenly at the bar, telling them, “You guys aren’t as quiet as you think. A motel is fine, really.”

“See?” Abs hissed.

“No. No motel unless we have no other choice.”

Dead shrugged and sat on a stool at the bar. “I’m scared, yeah. I just don’t want to involve all of you if I don’t have to.”

It tore at his heart to hear it. Goldie saw the pain in the man’s eyes, saw the fear. “We’re involved. Just…Just tell me where you have your things and I’ll go pick them up for you.”

“They’re at a motel,” he said with a little twitch of his red, succulent lips.

Goldie smiled, and Abs winked at him. “Hmm. What do you know?”

“Shut up, Abs.”

After Goldie got a glass of water for himself, he sat at a table with Dean. The way he felt wasn’t normal. Goldie wasn’t shy, and he wasn’t skittish about talking to men he was attracted to in the least.

But there was something different about Dean, and it was more than being so similar to that picture.

“I had a family once,” Dean said. “They were alcoholics. They were…mean. Dad left finally when I was about twelve, and my stepmom didn’t want me. She sent me back to my mom, who lost me over her hitting my sister, and when I got there, she started hitting me. I left when I was fourteen.”

“I couldn’t work at that age, so I…”

“Hooked? Fuck, that was really young.”

“Yeah. I made three times what I make now,” he said with a sour chuckle.

Goldie was disgusted but not surprised. “I’m sorry you had to go through that. You’ll find though, you’re in good company here. All of us, at least us bartenders, we’ve all had rough pasts. Murphy, the owner of this place, well, he gave us all second chances.”

“Nice guy. What was the reason?”

“Excuse me?”

“He didn’t do it out of the kindness of his heart. Had to be a bargain. I do this for you, and you do something for me. It’s how the world works.”

Jaded for good reason, and not completely wrong. Murphy did have an agenda for collecting them. “He needed us to…work here. Gay, halfway decent-looking men, and in exchange, we all make a lot of money on the weekends. Which it almost is, so maybe you can stick around and see why.”

“And you fuck the high-paying customers, or what?”

Goldie laughed. “Murphy would kill us. That’s off-limits. In fact, we’re not supposed to date each other or the customers, but some have…bent that a bit.”

Dean sat back, shaking his head. “Really? So, no hooking, hustling, anything? Just…making drinks?”

“You have no idea how well we make drinks.”